tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 12 14:24:11 1994

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Re: tam poHvo'



chargwI' writes:

>...
>...one of the novels posits that Klingons can see into what humans call
    ultraviolet...
>Basically, until someone writes something more like an encyclopedia...

Well, let me jump in and mention the Extended Corpus Project of the KLI!
The pre-Okrandic novels mention many little Klingonisms just like these
colors.  And, no one has yet to collect a complete set of notes on all
occurences of Klingon words, phrases, concepts, etc.  Until now!

You can join in the work of the Extended Corpus Project by sending a
SASE to:
	David E. G. Sturm, Coordinator
	Extended Corpus Project
	POBox 2832
	Auburn, AL 36831-2832

All the work that is asked is that you just read the novels assigned and
take good notes...  Already we are racking up a whole bunch of notes,
but we need many participants since the number of pronovels is well
around 200 now.  (And of course there are many other resources on the
fringes such as the comics, the fannovels, etc that we would also wish
to survey!)

And to answer your query at last, the two colors mentioned are transcribed
as "amarklor" and "kalish".  I suspect that these would appear something
as >'amartlhor< and >qeylIS< or >qalIS<.  These came to light in the
novel _Pawns and Symbols_ by Majliss Larson.  

As a physicist, I can tell you that there is a range of ultraviolet beyond
violet that would be available for sight, but actually only a small sliver.
Around 2500 Angstroms, it is not possible for ultraviolet to be transmitted
in a 78% N2 20% O2 atmosphere like ours on Earth.  However this leaves a
range from 2500 to 3500 that we do not exactly detect with the 3 ranges
human eyes operate in.  Presumably Klingons would have a different phot
osensitive chemical in the eye.  The book aptly describes this, I recommend
its discussion.                                               ;

Considering the general absence of a variety of color terms in Klingon, I 
suspect the "real" reason for a more lengthly list of terms in TKD is that
the informant was unable to translate the different perception of colors
to a Klingon to the compiler of Klingon grammar.  :-)

More someday in that HolQeD article I will eventually get around to,

Dave.



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