tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Dec 05 08:25:45 1996

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RE: greetings



At 06:47 PM 12/4/96 -0800, HurghwI' wrote:
>>Qapla' can be used as greeting too, when adressing honoured warriors.
>
>I always thought of it as a send-off. I've never heard it used as a
>greeting, but I may be wrong.

You're not wrong. *Qapla'* means success, nothing more, nothing less. It is
used as a sort of salute -- like saying in English, "Good luck!", or even
the idiom "Break a leg". It doesn't mean "Goodbye", "Hello", "Peace" or
anything like that. It just means "Success!", "Do well in battle!" .. That
type of thing.

Using it in the context of "Hello" or "Goodbye" is something that has been
abused by Paramount. Since the writers don't know what it really means, and
they've seen it used in their minds as "Goodbye", they decide that they will
make Klingons say Qapla' as a greeting or something because it sounds neat.

-mayq



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