tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jul 17 17:41:25 1997
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Re: paghmo' tIn mIS.
Donald E. Vick wrote:
|[email protected] wrote:
|> I just (tried to) read "paghmo' tIn mIS", the klingon version of
|> "Much about nothing" (translated 1994 by the KLI, Nick Nicholas)
|>
|> In section 3.3. I noticed some letters capitalized that are usually not
|> capitalized. What gives?
|>
|> (V: QaQMej. QaQMe'Mejchugh, NIvMa' ghotvam. ej Matschaj yaHlu'.)
|
| My guess is, it's a typo. Ignore it.
Unlikely. Nick is too careful to make this sort of repeated error on
something he posted for the world to see. My guess is he's dealing with a
bit of working class Shakespearian dialect. He did the same thing in
Hamlet V.1 (the graveyard scene). From his notes in the 1996 KLI edition:
"The crowner: lit. the Presiding Death Officer ({Heghutlh'a'}) from a very
peculiar dialect found mainly in the lower levels of the Klingon social
strata. Such can be seen in their abbrevitaion of {Hegh'utlh} by {Heghutlh}.
The main characteristic of this dialect is hypernasalization, i.e., all {b}
are spoken as {M} and all {D} as {N}. But the dialect also has many
colloquialisms and localisms difficult to put into Terran terms." (p. 208)
Nick was inspired by Okrand's pronunciation notes in TKD:
"{b} ... Some Klingons pronounce this sound as if it were {m} and {b}
articulated almost simultaneously. Speakers of English can approximate
this sound by saying `imbalance' without the initial /i/ sound. A very
small number of Klingons pronounce {b} as if it were {m}." (TKD p. 13)
"{D} ... As with Klingon {b}, some speakers pronounce {D} as if it were
more like /nd/, and a distinct minority as if it were {n}--but, of course,
with the tongue in the same position as for {D}." (TKD p. 14)
(Okrand needed to do this bit of fudging to take into account the "Klingon"
gibberish ad libbed by Mark Lenard in ST:TMP which Okrand later
transcribed, matched with the subtitles and used as the basis for the
tlhIngan Hol in ST3.)
Capital {M} and {D} are used to mark these sounds as unusual. It also looks
as if Nick has his character drop initial {'} and pronounce {tlh} as {ts}
(using a lower case {s} to mark it). If you substitute the correct letters,
you get:
QaQbej. QaQbe'bejchugh, DIvba' ghotvam. 'ej batlhchaj yaHlu'.
which makes a lot more sense. I imagine you're reading <paghmo' tIn mIS>
alongside the English text of "Much Ado." Out of curiosity, what's the
corresponding line in the original?
Voragh