tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 30 17:22:00 1995
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Re: A new Klingon word?
On Thu, 30 Mar 1995, A.Appleyard wrote:
> On BBC TV2 (British TV) last night in the Star Trek (TNG) episode "Power
> Play" (about when the Enterprise gets into a scrape with small energy beings
> found on a moon that the starship "Essex" had crashed on 200 years before),
> some of the energy beings (thought for a time to be ghosts or spirits of the
> crew of the "Essex"), take over 3 of the crew, and about 28 minutes after the
> episode started Worf says "We Klingons also know of this: we call it [what
> sounded like] {chatning}, `the takeover of the living by the dead'.". It could
> possibly have been {cha'ning}. What is the correct form of this word? Can it
> be treated as canonical?
The word is Jat'yIn. I'm usually hesitant to accept every Klingon word
appearing in the series as canon tlhIngan Hol. We often see Klingon
words in the series which do not conform to tlhIngan Hol phonology or
orthography and they could even be words from a different Klingon
dialect.
For most speakers of tlhIngan Hol, a canon word is one which has been
presented by Marc Okrand and includes the TKD, the audio tapes, the
trading cards and interviews in HolQeD. (This is a different definition
of canon than used by Trekkers at large. To most Trekkers, canon
refers to the Star Trek universe as presented in finished, aired episodes
and released versions of the movies.)
For example the Klingon dagger with the two retractible side blades is
called a "d'k tahg" in the series, but Okrand has referred to it as {SuvwI'
taj} or {tlhIngan may' taj}. The latter two terms would be considered
canon tlhIngan Hol while d'k tahg is not. We don't even know how d'k tahg
would be spelled in tlhIngan Hol.
As for Jat'yIn, although you could easily transcribe it in tlhIngan Hol
as {*jatyIn}, I don't think a purist would regard it as a bona fide, de
jure, canonical, tlhIngan Hol word in the strictest sense. On the other
hand it comes pretty close to one and I doubt people will flame you if
you use it in tlhIngon Hol speech. If you did try use it, the real
problem is that we don't know if {*jatyIn} is supposed to be a verb or a
noun or both.
yoDtargh