tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 14 08:15:05 2014
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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] A Challenge to the group
Well I'll start with the classic:
Q: Doq'a' SuvwI'pu'? [Are warriors red?]
A: ghobe', SuD! [No, they are green!] PK
{SuD} "be green/blue/yellow" vs. {SuD} "gamble, take a chance, take a risk". Nick Nicholas wrote:
the interpretation I think makes sense rather neatly: a pun
on {SuD} ("No, they're risktakers.")
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons
[email protected]:
> Remember the scene from the first STNG episode where Worf turns to Data
> and says, "I don't understand their sense of humor, either."?
>
> There's a class of joke that makes no sense in translation, because the
> funny part is all about the words and their multiple meanings. Danish, as
> I understand it, has an old joke that they think is hilarious. Forgive my
> misspelling, but it goes something like, "For for ikke for. For for lam."
>
> The translation is, "Sheep do not give birth to sheep. Sheep give birth
> to lambs." It's funny to them because the word "for" is a noun for
> "sheep" and also a verb for "give birth to". It's not funny in
> translation.
>
> In English, we have, "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a
> banana."
>
> It's funny because both "flies" and "like" have two completely unrelated
> meanings, and the pattern of the first sentence sets you up to
> misinterpret the second sentence until you've heard the whole second
> sentence, parsed it and realized that it is gibberish until you back up
> and parse it again with the other meaning for "flies like". It's less
> funny after going through the technical details of it, but hey, it's
> still a pretty good joke.
>
> So, who can think of jokes in Klingon that use this particular technique
> for making funny sentences in Klingon? The sequence of the words needs to
> suggest an interpretation that is gibberish until later words in the
> sentence force you to go back and reinterpret the earlier words.
>
> I don't have any initial suggestions, though in my copious free time,
> I'll try to work on some. Meanwhile, can anybody else out there come up
> with anything?
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