tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed May 03 09:36:24 1995
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extended rumor
According to R.B Franklin:
[detleted stuff about "to be"]
> > Does tlhIngan Hol even have such a beast? (My gut feeling is yes, I mean,
> > how else is Hamlet to make his infamous declaration of existance? Somehow
> > (yIn, yInbe' qoj)
> > doesn't seem adequate enough.)
>
> This is the story I heard: When Okrand was consulted on ST6 on how to
> say, "To be or not to be," he came up with {yIn pagh yInbe'}.
> Christopher Plummer, the actor who plays General Chang remarked that
> {yIn} didn't sound "Klingon enough". So Okrand created the verb {taH}
> on the spot. So now we have {taH pagh taHbe'.}
The version of this story Okrand told at StellarCon 17 was that
he was told only that they would want a line from Shakespeare.
He was not told which one. He prepared by translating lots of
lines from the bard which were very Klingon in nature. He had
the list with him.
The producer (director?) turned to him and said, "Give me, 'to
be or not to be.'"
Okrand was completely off guard. One of the things he put a lot
of thought into was to avoid any direct form of "to be" in the
language. No infinitives. Those concepts are handled in other
ways than our one verb.
Still, Okrand expected a paycheck, and with the actors and
camera crew stood there staring at him, and thousands of
dollars a minute going by while they waited for the line, he
quickly came up with converting the verb suffix into a verb
unto itself. The result is completely ungrammatical; one of the
worst lines in canon, but it was written under pressure, and we
are stuck with it.
The story he told about Christopher Plummer was that once given
the syllables, he pronounced it as if it were {taHpagh ...
taHbe'} When he realized that the rhythm did not break the
words in a normal way, he was pleased because he felt it would
be more authentically aliean that way.
> > Also, did Okrand *really* mean to make the pairs of conjunctions mirror
> > images of each other (je 'ej joq qoj )?
>
> I'm sure it's not a just a coinsidence.
Given that he pointed that out himself, just in case you didn't
notice, I'm quite certain it was no coincidence (unless you
consider the mood he must have been in when he came up with the
idea to itself be a coincidence.).
> > targhthluH
>
> yoDtargh
charghwI'
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