tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Aug 18 22:16:48 1998
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Re: Par'mach (QaH!)
ja' Patricia Landrum:
>I was watching "Looking for /par'mach/ in All the Wrong Places" (DS9)
>recently, and I wondered what the Klingon in that episode meant. First
>there was that conversation between Kahless and Lukara, then Dax
>challenges Worf at the end. Was that all non-canonical nonsense
>(there's a tongue-twister!) or did it actually mean something in real
>/thlIngan hol/?
At the time it aired, it was basically nonsense. There were words in
the script with the English meaning of the Kahless/Lukara exchange,
and the "Klingon" lines don't match our understanding of tlhIngan Hol
at all. This was discussed in HolQeD 5:4 (my copy of which seems to
have disappeared).
However, Marc Okrand addressed the situation in his recent book
_Klingon for the Galactic Traveler_. On page 13, we read:
Finally, Klingon myths were originally told and retold, then
later written down, in {no' Hol} [ancestors' language]. In
modern times, some are read or told in the original form,
though most are familiar only in their modern translations.
Even in the most up-to-date versions, however, certain lines
are so famous in their original form that they are seldom
altered. An example of this is found in the story of Kahless
and Lukara...
So they aren't the {ta' Hol} we use here, but they *are* supposed to
be considered valid phrases in an ancient form of the language. For
instance, {mova' 'aqI' ruStaq} is identified as a {no' Hol} way to say
"today was a good day to die."
jang Qov:
>At the time, the word parmach itself was a huge topic of controversy.
>It's since been cannonized. in /parmaqay/.
The nouns are {parmaq} "love, romance" and {parmaqqay} "romantic partner"
as given in KGT, with some extra explanation that the concept of "romance"
here is quite a bit more agressive than the English translation suggests.
-- ghunchu'wI'