tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 05 08:15:41 1997

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Re: Gowran's Blessing



In response to:

>>House, in the sense of clan is *tuq*. That word is not in TKD, but we have
>>it from a canonical source.

Jerryl Evanee wrote:

>Greatly appreciated. Just curious - what would that mysterious canonical
>source be?

The word appears in THE KLINGON WAY (p. 34).  You'll also find it listed in
the current issue of HolQeD, and on the page of Klingon words *not* in TKD
on the KLI's website.

> Still, for a "culture" that is concerned with the many forms of honour,
> one would think that more words would be found for the various shades of
> meaning between glory, reknown, honour... We will have to nudge the
> language institute to provide us with better fodder!

Nudge all you like, but I don't agree with this kind of "linguistic
relativity" argument (you're not one of those people who still think
Eskimos have hundreds of words for kinds of snow, are you?).

Consider the word "love" in English. Think of all the vastly different
kinds of love we can invoke with this love.  I love my wife, I love my dog,
I love the way air smells on a cold autumn morning when I'm out for a walk,
I love deepdish pizza with sausage, pepperoni, bacon, mushrooms, and extra
cheese.  I assure you I don't love these things in the same way, nor would
any native English speaker be confused. The subtlety is understood at the
cultural level.  It's not the language's fault that such subtleties don't
translate worth a damn.

Lawrence




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