tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jul 05 11:31:30 1998
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Re: -Curses
On Sun, 5 Jul 1998, David Trimboli wrote:
>From: Steven Boozer <[email protected]>
>>bIlugh. Not all epithets are exotic (toDSaH, petaQ, etc.). Don't forget
>>some are perfectly good nouns used in other contexts: Ha'DIbaH, qoH, Qa'Hom,
>>HuH, veQ, tu'HomIraH, etc. And in the episodes, the epithets are indeed
>>nouns.
>
>Ignoring the talk about Star Trek episodes (we all know how closely they
>follow TKD), this is the first good evidence pointing towards epithets being
>used as nouns: the fact that nouns may be used as epithets.
>Forget Maltz: we have Chang.
>
>". . . having been lulled into a false sense of security by an invitation to
>a state dinner aboard Captain Kirk's vessel, at precisely nineteen-hundred
>thirty hours that same evening." (the beginning of the trial in Star Trek
>VI)
Make up your mind, SuStel. You can't have it both ways. Either you only
accept lines written in tlhIngan Hol by Okrand himself, rejecting lines
written by the Paramount writing staff -- in which case you have to reject
Chang's line regarding "hundred hours" as evidence -- or you accept lines
written by others as providing clues to Klingon usage. Note that I said
*clues*, not rules or examples of good style.
To keep it in the Trek universe (as Okrand himself likes to do), consider
these as instances where the Universal Translators have slipped up, letting
some of the underlying Klingon through. Since there is no Standard
equivalent to {petaQ} -- the writers' favorite epithet -- it is passed by the
translator untranslated, whereas words like "bastard", "whore", "fool",
"stubborn idiot", etc. are replaced by their Standard counterparts.
Where this may not tell us which affixes can and cannot be used with these
epithets, context can at least tell us the difference between a weak,
cowardly {petaQ} and an incompetent, ignorant {toppa'}. And *that's* why I
set the scene and quoted more than just the word under discussion when I
posted my little list.
Voragh