tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Apr 01 00:29:45 2012
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[Tlhingan-hol] a tiny information from Maltz
Hi Dear Klingonists,
some of us have been working on the translation of Facebook recently,
and Maltz has been watching us. Some things are really hard to
translate, but Maltz did not really want to help. He was a real
curmudgeon lately, in Klingon: {'I'SeghIm}.
One interesting thing he could say was how to form languages, which is
always "country + Hol", not "country + ngan + Hol".
This is not an april's fool, by the way ;-)
Lieven.
-------- Original-Message --------
Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 03:53:42 -0400
From: Marc Okrand
To: Klingonischkurs Saarbrücken <[email protected]>
[...]
As for your specific questions... I can give only a partial answer
right now. Maltz has been kind of a curmudgeon lately. (Do you know
that English word? The closest Klingon equivalent is 'I'SeghIm.)
Nevertheless, Maltz said that for language names the construction
"country + Hol" is most common (so he preferred DoyIchlan Hol). Of
course, it doesn't have to be a "country." It could be a region or a
political unit or alliance of another kind (which is why DIvI' Hol fits
in). He noted that tlhIngan Hol is really a shortened form of tlhIngan
wo' Hol, but nobody ever says that in everyday speech.
If one were to say vulqangan Hol ("Vulcan's language" or "Vulcans'
language"), that could mean the same thing as vulqan Hol, so the speaker
would generally not be misunderstood, but if at an intergalactic
gathering a Vulcan were speaking Federation Standard, then vulqangan Hol
for that Vulcan at that time and place would be DIvI' Hol. There is no
such thing as qa'naDa' Hol, but qa'naDa'ngan Hol might refer to DIvI'
Hol or vIraS Hol (or Cree or Inuit or many other languages).
So Maltz thought it best to avoid the -ngan construction for language names.
I'll have to get back to you about names of days of the week. Maltz was
very familiar with jaj wa' being used for "Sunday" in the publicity for
the Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas. He said he assumed that whoever
used that translation was catering to Americans who were used to
considering Sunday the first day of the week, but the way the Klingon
system and all of the Earth systems he had heard of overlaid on each
other was complex (then he mumbled something about tlhIngan Hoghmey and
wandered off). When I next find him in a talkative mood, I'll try to
figure out what he was referring to.
[...]
- Marc
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