tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 13 17:49:59 1993

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House languages



>From: [email protected] (The Songbringer -- Marnen to the common fol
>    k)
>Date: Mon, 12 Jul 93 17:24:09 EDT
>X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
>Content-Length: 1008


>Erich Schneider says:
>: With respect to the "masculine/feminine" thing:
>: 
>: One interesting thing I noted is that the word for "to marry" is
>: different for males and females. ("Saw" for males, "nay" for females.)
>: I wonder where this comes from?
>A similar situation exists in Russian, but there, the words are derived from
>those for "husband" (for women) and "wife" (for men), which does not seem to be
>the case in Klingon.

The same thing occurs in Esperanto: edzigxi ("become a husband"), and
edzinigxi ("become a wife") (using the infamous "-in" femininization
suffix).  The couple as a whole, of course, uses the verb "geedzigxi"
(become husband-and-wife).

I don't see that it's all that unusual to have separate words.  The rite
could certainly be (or at least be seen as) different for the man and the
woman, so it's reasonable to have special words for each side. Could the
word for male-marriage-act (Saw) be related to "klingon fighting" (tonSaw)?
Maybe.  Perhaps there's some sort of battle, possibly staged, involving the
groom at some point in the ceremony.

I recall that L'aadan (a language created specifically for women) had
special words for "to perform the female sexual act" and "lover-male"/
"lover-female".  Then again, part of its purpose was to deal with gender
issues.

~mark



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