tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 29 09:19:23 2003

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Re: MOST terminology

Teresh000 ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

ghItlh SuStel:

> 
> 

> As I see it, /jIH/ "monitor" is the device, /HaSta/ "visual display" is what 
> you see through a camera (like viewing what's directly in front of your 
> space ship, for instance), and /wIy/ "tactical display" is an abstracted 
> view of some area, like a map.
> 
> People often come up with stretched meanings of /HaSta/, because they want a 
> word that means something like "movie" or "graphics," but we don't really 
> have such words.
> 

This is sort of what I was lamenting in my post about vocabulary a while
back.  We keep thinking we have no word for "picture" or "image" in any
of its senses, and we refuse to consider the possibility that {HaSta}
may be that missing word, mainly (I think) because we are stuck in a
literalist, concrete mode of thinking: since we know that {HaSta} is
glossed as "visual display", and this meaning was given to us by a
technician from a Klingon starship, then that's all it can possibly mean
(whatever that is).  But I have a sneaking suspicion that {HaSta} as
"visual display" is simply a specialized extrapolation of a word
with much wider application in Klingon in general.  Too bad there's
no way to really know. I wish sometimes that when Okrand gave us
new words, he would go back and look at the resources that already
exist, instead of making up brand-new ones each time.

-- ter'eS

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