tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 18 11:22:18 1995
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Re: coffee
On Thu, 18 May 1995, Anthony Curran wrote:
> I agree. And I'd like to make a stab at transliterating them.
> How about <<la'te'>> and <<qap'uchIno'>>.
how about not transliterating at all? many many peoples been
transliterating stuff lately, and i feel the need to publicly state my
utter dislike for transliteration.
with regard to the transliterations above: if you were to read a
sentence that said,
<la'te' vIpar> or maybe even <*la'te' vIpar> (*marked so you know
its a transliteration or made-up word)
what would you think it was saying? frankly, even if it were marked as a
non-canon word, i doubt many people would realize it was talking about a
coffee drink.
i for one don't pronounce "latte" as "lah' tey'". i don't know anyone
that does. and i keep seeing this kind of poor transliteration --
recently someone tried to pass <*Dorov> or something similar as a
transliteration of "Dwarf". no, that just doesn't make the cut, i'm
afraid.
so here's my plea: stop transliterating! just stop! you don't need it
in the everyday messages here on the list; and unless you plan on
adding footnotes to your ASCII translations, you don't need it there
either. after all, English didn't transliterate "latte" when it borrowed
the word from Italian; if it did, we'd either spell it differently or
pronounce it "lat" (rhymes with "cat").
okay. my rant is done. sorry.
sorta.
> BTW, I seem to remember from when I first signed on to this list
> (about two months ago), catching the tail end of a discussion on
> this very subject. Do any of the original participants recall
> what their suggestions were? Or am I mistaken?
actually, that was a very shortlived discussion which erupted (and just
as suddenly fell away) when Dr. Schoen told us of the new Klingon word
for coffee. folks began wondering about naming other java drinks. i
believe i remember a <qa'vIn HoS> or a <qa'vIn'a' HoSqu'> for expresso or
cappuchino or something, but i'm no longer certain what the exact
wordings were.
> qo'ran
--naQ'avwI': *Swahili Hol ghoj 'e' nIDtaHvIS, Qapjaj ghaH!
*&* naQ'avwI': batlh reH qa'vIn'a' toy'rupchu'qu'taHjaj ghaH!
*&* Silauren, Half-Elven / naQ'avwI' / http://sunsite.unc.edu/quack