tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed May 01 08:58:12 1996

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

notes on the CD-ROM Language Lab

charghwI' answered a question from peHruS that I didn't see, about 
<lung>. I've been playing a lot with the Language Lab [at work! 
This counts as work! }}}:-)\ ], though I haven't been through it 
all, and I can answer it. Most of these examples are from the 
"food and drink" category -- one of eight -- because that's the 
one the Klingon team at Dragon Systems will be using for our demo 
at the company meeting tomorrow. 

Many of the words have a "more" button, which gives you audio of 
Marc Okrand telling you more about the word. In some cases it's 
purely grammatical, e.g., on <targh tIq>, he says that even though 
the dish may be served with the hearts of more than one targh, the 
plural <tIqmey> is never used in the name of the dish. He says the 
same about <breghIt tagh> and <qagh>, but for <qurgh> 'beans' and 
<vIno'va' qurgh> 'finova beans', he says that you can add <-mey> 
to make it clear that you're talking about more than one bean. 

In another grammatical "more" note, he explains <naHlet> 'nuts' as 
being formed from <naH> 'fruit or vegetables' plus <let> 'hard', 
so literally 'hard fruit'; but he also gives the plural (optional 
as always) as <naHletmey>: not <naHmey let>. So this <naHlet> is a 
true compound noun, not just a phrase. If a Klingon asks 
forXXXXXXXXdemands <naHlet>, don't give her unripe apples; you'll 
probably get them thrown at your head. <naHlet'e' vIpoQpu'! naHmey 
let vIneHbe'qu'!> 

(And now we know that Klingons are not strict carnivores, since 
they eat beans and nuts.) 

(BTW, I don't have the CD at my desk and I didn't write down the 
exact quotations, so don't take any of these approximations as 
canonical in detail.) 

Sometimes the "more" info is cultural. For <raHta'>, translated 
just as "racht", it's "There's nothing worse than half-dead 
racht." (That *is* an exact quote. "Racht" rhymes with German 
"Nacht", pronounced as if it were <raHt>.) And on <qagh> he goes 
into some detail on the distinction between <ghargh>, which refers 
to serpent worm(s) as animal(s), and <qagh>, which refers to 
serpent worms alive but with seasonings and sauce added, served as 
food, and which is never pluralized. 

The "more" on <Duran lung DIr> includes a sentence something like 
this: "Although <lung> is translated as 'lizard', it actually can 
refer to any animal of that general shape, such as a newt or 
salamander." (Hmmm... "<lung>" Gingrich?)  

Similarly, <HIq HIvje'mey> 'beer steins' actually can also refer 
to wine glasses, or in fact to any stemware, crystal, or stoneware 
used for alcoholic beverages. With such generality, I suppose a 
wooden bowl for mead would be included too. (Think about that one. 
Most of the Klingon foods sound pretty disgusting from a human 
viewpoint. OK, then, what's mead? It's an alcoholic beverage made 
by fermenting the secretions of an insect. -- And it's GOOD!) 

In the pronunciation practice, when you get the word right, you 
hear O'Reilly/Gowron saying <Qapla'!>, while the word "Complete!" 
appears on the right of the screen. That doesn't make a lot of 
sense in this context. It sure looks as if they set up the 
playback, then somebody decided to add a visual confirmation and 
put in the English word he thought it was. 

You can call up "drill" at any time. There are four different 
types of drill, but you can't choose, and they seem to alternate 
at random. None of them involve your speaking; they use various 
combinations of Klingon text, English text, images, and "Klingon 
runes", which are strings of pIqaD glyphs. Although these are the 
same graphics used by the KLI, they aren't used with the same 
phonetic values, and in fact it's hard to see how they COULD be 
meaningful, since they're only up to 5 or 6 characters long. For 
example, for <ghojmeH taj> (boy's knife, "knife for learning"), 
the runes, transliterated according to KLI usage, would be 
            gh ng l a               q v
            l ng gh                 l gh a v r 
When you click on a rune you hear a word from the vocabulary. 
Finally you choose one rune to match the picture and 
transliteration. If you're wrong, a whiny, nasty, Ferengi-like 
voice says something like "No! This is NOT a disruptor!" 
(Sometimes it says "That's completely wrong!")  Though I haven't 
played the game, I'm told that the runes aren't used in it; so 
apparently they're just functioning as anchors for the audio 
clips. I haven't checked to see whether a particular rune always 
matches the same audio.

Qapla'! -- and also, though NOT equivalently: jIghItlhpu'.

      marqem, tlhIngan veQbeq la'Hom -- Heghbej ghIHmoHwI'pu'! 
     Subcommander Markemm, 
            Klingon Sanitation Corps -- Death to Litterbugs! 

                         Mark A. Mandel 
    Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200 
  320 Nevada St. :  Newton, Mass. 02160, USA : [email protected]

Back to archive top level