tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Feb 24 14:09:52 2008
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Re: Klingon WOTD: tIng (noun)
The first reason that Okrand did this is because, well, he can. He
likes making things weird. It adds to the charm of the language.
Let's think about it. A Terran compass has:
North: Zero (or 360)
Northeast: 45
East: 90
Southeast: 135
South: 180
Southwest: 225
West: 270
Northwest: 315
North by Northwest: 332.5
A Klingon compass has:
chan: 90
tIng: 220
'ev: 320
If he had split the compass evenly, then we'd have had:
tIng: 210
'ev: 330
So, here on Earth, we have a big country in the Far East {chIn'a'} and
a character named "Eve" played by an actress named "Eva" in a movie
named "North by Northwest". I don't think anybody has figured out what
we have {tIng}. He did study Native Americans in the Southwest, so
likely it's still a pun. We just don't know it yet.
An evenly split compass would have pointed more accurately toward NNW,
so that doesn't really explain why the asymmetry was created.
Doq
On Feb 24, 2008, at 10:45 AM, Parker Glynn-Adey wrote:
> [snip]
>
>> Additional Notes:
>> HolQeD 8:4, p. 6. While the four main compass points used in the
>> Federation (north, east, south, west) are distributed evenly (that
>> is, they
>> are 90 degrees apart from each other: north is 90 degrees away from
>> east,
>> east is 90 degrees away from south, and so on), this is not the
>> case in the
>> Klingon system. The three directions are not evenly spaced (that
>> is, they
>> are not 120 degrees apart from each other). Instead, the areas
>> associated
>> with {'ev} and {tIng} are closer to each other than than either is
>> to the
>> area associated with {chan}. (The areas associated with {'ev} and
>> {tIng}
>> are something like 100 degrees apart from each other, and each is 130
>> degrees away from the area associated with {chan}.)
>
>
> Does anyone know why this is? Is there a cultural or political
> reason why
> Klingons were mostly headed {'ev} and {tlng}?
>
> The Klingon Word Of The Day is brought to you by Holtej (
>> [email protected]). Please contact me with additions,
>> corrections or
>> comments.
>>
>> --Holtej 'utlh
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>>
>>
>>
>
>
>