tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jan 20 14:03:43 1998
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Re: qa'vIn chavwI'
- From: Qov <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: qa'vIn chavwI'
- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 14:02:56 -0800
At 09:27 98-01-11 -0800, charghwI' wrote:
}<Qenvob> Hutlh mu'ghomwIj.
Hutlh je yabwIj. I had to look it up. But it made me think about all the
times people complain about the lack of a word, justifying it as "an
important part of Klingon culture," and "surely they would have one word for
this!"
As far as my studies go, tea drinking is a very key aspect of the Human
culture under which Federation Standard developed. They have rituals around
it, fought wars partly based on ensuring their access to it, and practise
numerous social rituals involving it. But you know what? They don't have
separate words for the plant it comes from, the meal they serve with it, the
fresh harvested leaf, the dried leaf, the liquid brewed from it, or even the
dregs remaining afterwards. It's all tea, tea plant, tea cup, tea leaves,
dried tea, used tea leaves, tea time, eat your tea, drink your tea, brew
tea, tea biscuits. They don't have much in the way of separate verbs
referring to tea actions. They even call other beverages brewed by the same
infusion process by the same name, tea. Somehow they manage to get along
with descriptive phrases and using the same word over and over again.
While I understand the desire for words to embody the concepts you want to
talk about, arguments based on the concept's importance to the culture or
the existence of words for it in other cultures do not hold much water.
Qov [email protected]
Beginners' Grammarian