tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Aug 25 10:57:48 1996
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Khamlet vs Hamlet (fwd)
- From: "Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Khamlet vs Hamlet (fwd)
- Date: Sun, 25 Aug 1996 10:57:48 -0700
> I recently received the book Hamlet, and upon reading Nick
> Nicholas' introduction, I got confused. The pIqaD used to
> spell the name is Hamlet...however Nick, in transliterating
> the name spells it Khamlet....What's the deal? In the TKD
> it says that the H is pronounced like ch in Bach...not
> Bawk, but Bah. Could it be that the mispronunciation of
> Bach could lead to a mistransliteration of the tlhIngan
> H into English?
What's going on here is that Nick is being clever. He is writing in English for
the benefit of a presumed Federation audience. Such an audience does not have
the sounds of Klingon at hand, and also seems to have a tradition of rendering
many Klingon sounds (especially initial sounds for names) as the letter K.
Nick's treatment suggests that the name "Hamlet" would be written in Klingon as
<<Hamlet>> but pronounced (and presumably written in Federation standard) as
"Khamlet."
It's all a little twisted (and you'll see more of this as you read through the
introduction and see the names of other plays). The thing to keep in mind is
that there are three versions of each name:
1) The names as rendered by Shakespeare centuries ago.
2) The names in Klingon as rendered by the "true" author of the plays.
3) The Federation transliteration of the Klingon names from #2.
I hope this helps. And if it's any consolation, it confused the hell out of me
the first time I read it too.
Lawrence
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