tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 15 23:18:19 1994

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Meaning in Klingon



>From: [email protected]
>Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 2:32:32 -0600 (CST)


>I could not find a word for "meaning" in Klingon.

>However, I was watching the TNG episode with Kaless, and in this
>episode, Meaning seemed to be a very important issue.
>Unfortunately, they didn't dicuss this meaning in Klingon,
>so I didn't have a word to associate with it.

>Perhaps "life's direction" might work?

>Would that be "yInHe"? (Life's course?)

"Meaning" as you're using it is an awfully loaded word in English.  The
closest I can get to the meaning you seem to be expressing here (which is
not the same as the one I used in the word "meaning" in this sentence)
would probably be "yIn meq", "life's reason".  If you mean just "meaning"
as in "intent", something involving "Hech" would be a good place to look,
perhaps recasting it so it's a verb.

>In regards to the word "love" in Klingon, am I correct that it
>is backwards with respect to English?

>That is, in English, to be someone's love, the person is defined
>as being the object of the verb love.  In Klingon, to love
>is to make someone your love.... just my humble understaning
>from only a few days of Klingon. :-)

I think you have it backwards; from my reading of the dictionary, and the
line in whichever movie it was, "bang" is a noun, meaning "love" in the
sense of the object of love.  One who is loved.  A better translation would
be the noun "beloved".  So "bangwI' SoH" means "you are my beloved." 

>Rob Lent


~mark



Back to archive top level