tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Dec 05 09:45:29 1997
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N,S,E,W
- From: Mark Mandel <[email protected]>
- Subject: N,S,E,W
- Date: Fri, 05 Dec 1997 12:44:20 -0500
ghItlh Voragh:
>>>
: ps how about using sunrise and sunset (in whatever order) to represent
: East and West. They are arbitrary to almost all planets (including
: Kronos) : : qelayn
Except that we don't have words for "sunrise" or "sunset" either -- or even
"sun" (most people just use {Hov} or {Hovmaj}) -- just the verbs "ascend"
{Sal} and "descend" {ghIr}. Besides, how do you know that the Homeworld even rotates in the same direction as
Earth? If the planets in the Kronos system rotate in the opposite direction from our own, then the Klingon sun would
rise in the "West".
<<<
Well, no. The astronomical definition of East and West is based on the direction of rotation: the North pole of a body
is the one whose rotation is counterclockwise when you look down on it from space. The other directions follow
logically from that.
(I have not had the time to read this list regularly for many months -- though I continue to archive it! -- so I hope I am
not hunting where all the game has already been killed.)
The only way a planet can have its sun rise in the west -- barring weird jokes like an artificial satellite that serves as
a "sun" -- is to have its day longer than its year. If a planet's rotation around its own axis, defined with respect to the
surrounding starfield (outside its own solar system), is slower than its revolution around its sun but in the same
general direction, then the sun will appear to rise in the west. That does not appear to be true of the homeworld,
since we have the forty-oddth day of a month.
Let me suggest here a set of terms for the cardinal directions, based on the sun's apparent daily path through the
sky:
west pemHov 'et
east pemHov 'o'
north pemHov nIH
south pemHov poS
These are independent of the hemisphere you happen to be in (unlike terms that relate "cold" to north and "warm" to
south, which work only in the northern hemisphere). I owe the idea for "north" and "south" to H. Beam Piper's
Fuzzies.
marqem, tlhIngan veQbeq la'Hom -- Heghbej ghIHmoHwI'pu'!
Subcmdr. Markemm, Klingon Sanitation Corps -- Death to Litterbugs!
** Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist : [email protected] **
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
Personal home page: http://world.std.com/~mam/