tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jun 25 12:41:56 1996
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Re: Klingon Cards
- From: "Mark J. Reed" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Klingon Cards
- Date: Tue, 25 Jun 96 15:41:44 EDT
- In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 25 Jun 1996 12:08:18 -0700. <[email protected]>
I suggested this to Lawrence once, and the idea had at that time
already come up at the first qep'a' (presumably in the now-famous
Krankor poker game). It doesn't seem like a good KLI project precisely
because there's not much to it - not a lot of linguistic merit. (I
plan on creating a deck for my personal use, mostly for the artistic
pleasure of designing the illustrations. . . but that's *completely*
off-topic.)
However, since Klingonists do get together and play cards, it does make
sense to be able to talk about it, so we at least need a list of names
for the various cards, and other card-playing terminology. I believe
such a list was developed and included in Krankor's column in one of
the issues of _HolQeD_, but I am away from my collection at the moment.
There are a couple problems with your version. First, the deck itself:
a standard deck of playing cards does not have a "1"; the Ace *is* the
one. As far as the translations, {be'nal ta'} means "wife's
emperor"; "wife of emperor" (= "emperor's wife") would be {ta' be'nal}.
Also, the Ace is not necessarily "highest of them all"; it depends
entirely on the game at hand. Anyway, I don't think a standalone
law'/puS construction makes a good name, and {jen} probably refers to
physical altitude, not rank. I would stick with {wa'} for the Ace.
(But again, the preferred terms would be those in the _HolQeD_ column.)
-marqoS