tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon May 13 08:32:54 1996
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Days of the Week
- From: Mark Mandel <[email protected]>
- Subject: Days of the Week
- Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 11:27:15 -0500
I suggest the following Klingon translations for the Terrestrial
days of the week.
Here's my reasoning. The Germanic and Romance languages, at least,
name the days after astronomical bodies and (equivalently, at
least for Roman mythology) deities. In trying to translate Terran
concepts into Klingon there is no shame in adapting Terran names
for them.
I would have liked to go beyond Western Europe. The Slavic
languages use some pre-Christian names, but I don't know them.
(Although Russian, at least, calls Sunday "Voskresenja"
'Resurrection'.) Hebrew uses "first day", etc., starting with
Sunday and culminating with Saturday, the only one which has a
name, "Shabbat" (the Sabbath); we can't do much with that. In the
East Asian cultural area (e.g., Chinese and Japanese), the seven-
day week is a recent importation from the "West", so they use
translations too.
So the names in the following table are all based on the Romance-
Germanic day names. Generally the names are equivalent in the two
language families; I won't go into detail about the differences.
I've marked the basis of my choices with an asterisk. (For best results
view this table with a monospace font, such as Courier (a typewriter
style) or Monaco. It uses spaces, not tabs.)
day Germanic Roman function translated
god god name of day
Sunday -- -- sun* pemHovjaj (1)
Monday -- -- moon* maSjaj
Tuesday Tiw* Mars* war veSjaj
Wednesday Woden(Odin) Mercury* travel,business* malja'jaj
Thursday Thor* Jupiter lightning jevjaj
Friday Freya Venus love,sex bangjaj (2)
Saturday ?? (3) Saturn* time poHjaj
NOTES:
1. <Hovjaj> is also possible and would be shorter, but some people
already use it as the Federation "star date", whatever they mean
by that. (Pseudo-julian, or decimal parts of a year, or other
stuff. To my files, today is 96513, and the last minute of this
year will be 96c31.2359.) Besides, <pemHov> is what the Klingons
on this planet use for 'sun', in the sense of a given planet's
primary star.
2. I know <bang> isn't 'love' the emotion but 'love' the person,
as in "my love" = "my beloved". Would you prefer <ngaghjaj>? But
<ngagh> is a verb.)
3. I don't know the old Germanic name, which was evidently
supplanted by the Romance one. Saturn wasn't really a god of time,
but he was seen as equivalent to the Greek Kronos. Now, Kronos is
not the same word as chronos, any more than "tree" and "three" are
the same in English, but many people have treated the character as
though they were, and Kronos/Saturn is often viewed as a very old
man (or Titan), as in Holst's "The Planets". If you have a better
idea, yIchup!
marqem, tlhIngan veQbeq la'Hom -- Heghbej ghIHmoHwI'pu'!
Subcommander Markemm,
Klingon Sanitation Corps -- Death to Litterbugs!
Mark A. Mandel : [email protected]
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St. : Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
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