tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 13 11:35:58 1997

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

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

Re: Word Origin Speculation II

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

>Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 07:19:46 -0800
>From: Ivan A Derzhanski <[email protected]>
>
>Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
>> >From: "Kenneth Traft" <[email protected]>
>> >Posted for Glen Proechel, director of the Interstellar Language School
>> >***NOTE  -- This is speculation and is NOT canon
>> 
>> [...]  At any rate, does it really *matter* if Okrand didn't think
>> all these?  They're still really cool correspondences, accidental
>> or intentional, and can be mighty helpful in remembering what for me
>> is the toughest part of Klingon: the vocabulary.
>
>Yes, it does really matter.  Note that the subject of the thread is
>`Word Origin Speculation'.  It pretends to be a thread on how those
>words actually came into being (that is, how they made an appearance
>in Okrand's mind).  Which is not nearly the same thing as how someone
>could go about memorising them.

Perhaps you're right.  I guess it's all in how you look at it.  I didn't
want to see anything less innocent than just some clever mnemonic ideas and
idle speculation about "hmm, maybe Marc was thinking this..." so I didn't.
But note that it is *speculation*, not claiming to be actual fact.

>> >pI' = fat (pig),
>> 
>> Never thought of that one.
>
>Seems bogus to me.  You can prove anything if you settle for just
>two matching sounds.

Very true.  It's helpful to mnemonicists, but deceptive to speculators on
the actual word-origins, that with so many word in English and so many ways
of relating them to the Klingon, you can probably relate anything to
anything.  If I wanted to be perverse, I could also talk about pI' being
related to diet "pills".  And the synonym "ror" is like "roll" as in rolls
of fat.  But these I am sure are good for nothing but mnemonics.  I can
probably find a "derivation" for every single root in the dictionary
without going much farther afield than what we've already seen, simply
because I have so many English words to play with.

>> Like "Sop" for "sup"...
>
>To my mind {Sop} has iconic value, as does {chop}.  Sound symbolism,
>you know.  A greedy eating sound culminating in the snapping of the jaws.

I hear it as a slurping sound, actually.

>
>> > 'IH = beautiful (ick), [...]
>
>So English [k] can correspond to {H} and (presumably) {Q} and {'}
>as well as {q}.  That's the slippery slope of wishful thinking that
>eventually gets one to derive Middletown from Marmaduke.

It doesn't?

>I take it {mob} `be alone' is what you don't when in a mob?

Right, since we can derive from opposites or directly, and so on and so
forth...

>I wonder when someone will suggest that {yuD} is derived from the
>stereotypical Christian perception of Jews.  Or is that too imPC?

Ooh, hadn't thought of that one.

~mark

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.4, an Emacs/PGP interface

iQB1AwUBMwNtB8ppGeTJXWZ9AQEBsgL/cWqahsMcVKvE2/ubiGhvom0l2OIP/Ltn
sgTdY++e3H72LQxhSJOvA70hoViyM8apXoRdL86623Wphy21jrCsYK2IxMBm9O/o
zGtn5gSgxva5lTCeOv6J+vitFu3xWyYs
=oIy0
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Back to archive top level