tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 04 04:55:31 1994

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'What did you call me?' reply



>From: "Kevin A. Geiselman, Knight Errant" <[email protected]>
>Date: Thu, 31 Mar 1994 22:35:35 -0500 (EST)

>Mark Shoulson presented an article in the most recent HolQeD on invectives
>and epithets.  I was just thinking of doing such a thing for my own
>personal reference but he beat me to it.

>However, his 'translations' are based solely on speculation.  I went
>through the same list, looking at the roots of some of them and came up
>with some different ideas.

These are certainly interesting!  When I posted that article on the list
originally (way back when) I got similar responses, from folks who had run
the words through the various mechanical analyzers and come up with various
glosses which made no sense (calling someone a life-support system?)  My
answer was that I found running the words through analyzers like that a fun
pastime, but it really doesn't prove anything yea or nay about the words.
Vast quantities of words in most languages have zero to do with their
obvious roots, or are related in ways that isn't really plain anymore (my
usual example: "delight" has nothing whatsoever to do with making darkness,
i.e. removing light, de-lighting.  It was a respelling of the word "delite"
which was borrowed from French.  The spelling was under the mistaken
assumption that "delight" and "light" were related).  Then again, the ideas
you have seem cleverer than theirs, and worth thinking about.

>Qu'vatlh - said in 'moments of extreme anger'.  Qu' is task, vatlh is
>hundred.  Qu'vatlh, a hundred tasks.  Certainly a curse at having many
>things to accomplish and not enough resources to accomplish them.  I
>personally use this one in my own job.

Well, a hundred tasks is actually wa'vatlh Qu'.

>petaQ - This epithet has the root taQ, to be weird.  To call someone a
>petaQ would be calling him some sort of weirdo or pervert. (prEEEEvert!)

Grammatically, "Hey, y'all, be weird!"  That was what they were saying.
Obviously that doesn't work too well for me.  If we keep the mening of
"taQ", hopefully "pe-" is something different, no longer preserved in
anything else.

Feh, I'm doing what I said I didn't like.  I better stop.

>Kordite, Chief of Intelligence, IKV Dark Justice, Klingon Assault Group
>aka Kevin A. Geiselman, Knight Errant

~mark



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