tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 12 06:59:47 1994

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Re: tam poHvo'





On Tue, 10 May 1994, Peter Garza wrote:

> Can Klingon's see color as well as humans?  I know that some languages do
> not distinguish between blue and green, for example old Japanese, so not
> having the words to describe the full spectrum (according to English) would
> not be so strange.  However, to have only two words for distinguishing
> color (red/orange and blue/green/yellow) does strike me as a bit odd.
> Perhaps, with a better sense of smell (do they have that?), there was no
> evolutionary need to develop color recognition beyond its current state.
> Also, seeing the lack of color aboard ships and in the Great Hall, maybe
> that's not just an aesthetic choice, but a biological one as well.  Maybe
> Klingon's eyes are more attuned to greys and detail than humans'.  Well?
> Commentary?
> 
> Peter Garza
> [email protected]

The Human eye cannot see color in dim light, or it at least has great
difficulty.  The retina has rods and cones.  The rods see contrast only,
black and white.  The cones distinguish color and don't work well when the
light is dim.

Now, it is fairly well established that Klingons live in the dark, so to
speak.  The Klingon Homeworld seems in a perpetual state of overcast.  Not
a whole lot of light coming down so not a whole lot of color to see.  The
Klingons evolving in this environment would develop vision that saw better
contrast in dim light.  Klingons are probably fairly color blind.

Also, the lack of a variety of words for colors might be somewhat
cultural.  I've heard that the Inuit (Eskimos) have dozens of different
words to describe snow and the various shades of white.  It's because snow
is important to them.  Modern western culture has dozens of different
words to describe sex and sexual body parts.  It reflects the importance
of that in our society. (No, I won't list them)

A sort of concurrent point: Klingon doesn't seem to have a word for
breast.  Now, this might be because the dictionary is not complete, it
admits that, in fact.  Or it could be that, unlike humans that have a
score of different words to describe that part of the female anatomy,
Klingons just don't think breasts are particularly important.

Since all the Klingon women portrayed so far seem to be universally
'stacked', I can imagine Klingons wouldn't think their 'hectars of land'
unusual.  Klingons must think Human women to be quite flat chested.
(Sorry for diverging from the topic.)

One would expect Klingon to have many different words to describe different
types of honor, battle, weapons, etc.  For example, that dagger with the
blades that jump out has been called a qutluch (in the dictionary but I'm
not sure of its use in TNG, I'm sure I heard it somewhere), a lavek
(somewhere else, i don't remeember off hand), a d'k tahg (in the
Encyclopedia from 'Birthright'), and a taj (in the dictionary, simply
knife or dagger).

So, that should give you some ideas why Klingons is so lacking in color
names: Klingons are color blind, colors aren't important, they might see
into areas of the spectrum that Human eyes cannot see, so tyring to
describe the color in Federation Standard would be useless (like having a
bat or dolphin describe how sonar looks; 'It sounds green.')

Or maybe they are just asthetically challenged.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kordite, Chief of Intelligence, IKV Dark Justice, Klingon Assault Group

PS: I'm writing a story with a little tlhingan Hol in it and would like
any ideas anybody might have for saying 'breast' other than just 'torso'.



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