tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 28 08:24:25 1997

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Re: Cursing



At 12:36 PM 7/26/97 -0700, ghunchu'wI' wrote:
>ja' ter'eS:
>>I just realized that there's a whole area of Klingon vocabulary for which
>>we have no words at all!  I'm referring to adjectives you can use for
>>cursing.
>
>nuqjatlh?  Klingon *has* no adjectives, of course, but there are plenty of
>verbs that we can use for similar purposes.
>
All right, "descriptive verbs".

>>True, we have epithets (basically, names you can call someone),
>>and interjections (words that express your attitude to a situation), but
>>no verbs we can use to modify a single noun to express our feelings about
>>it.
>
>I have absolutely no idea what you're complaining about.  There are verbs
>galore that we can use to express what we think about things.
>

I'm not complaining; just making a comment.

>>Given Klingons' famed cursing skills, this seems an odd lack.
>
>It *would* be odd, if indeed this lack were real.
>
>>Granted, we have {qay'}, which might be such a verb, as in {Human qay' yIHoH}
>>"Kill the troublesome human!".  But this seems like a pretty weak curse:
>>"troublesome".  Probably {qay'} is just the tip of the iceberg.
>
>Open your eyes, and your mind!  What's wrong with {QIp}?  {Dogh}?  Or even
>{ghungbe'} or {puj} or {chuSqu'} or whatever fits the situation?
>

You misunderstand me; I guess I phrased that badly.  I'm referring to  
descriptive verbs used _primarily_ as curses.
We have all these epithets and invectives that, as far as we know, have
no other use except cursing, yet we have no descriptive verbs that are not
also for general use.  (Consider as a contrary example {Ha'DIbaH},
which can be used as a curse, but also as a plain non-insulting noun.  This
is the same as the other verbs you cited: they're primarily neutral
descriptive terms.)  

You open _your_ mind.  Just because you can insult someone using words like
{QIp}, etc., it does not follow that other, more specialized terminology
does not exist.  I wasn't saying that there's no way to insult someone
in Klingon.  What I was saying is that we have at present a lack of
descriptive terms dedicated to cursing.  After all, one of the things that
gives a curse its power is its unusualness.  Presumably, calling someone
a "motherf*cker" carries more power than calling someone a "weakling"
because we hear the first term so seldom and because it has _no other
use_ than a powerful insult.  {QIp}, {Dogh}, etc. are fine words and
can surely be used as insults, but their very ordinariness makes me sure
that Klingon has other, far stronger, verbs.  Given Klingon inventiveness,
I'd be surprised if this were not so.

>>Speaking of which, I also think {jay'} is only the tip of the iceberg, that
>>there are probably lots of intensifiers in Klingon.  These would express
>>finer shaded of meaning, eg. "intensity with a positive/surprised overtone",
>>"intensity mixed with disgust", "intensity mixed with dismay", etc.  The
>>intensifier {jay'} and the verb {qay'} are probably just the most generic
>>and blandest representatives of their kind.
>
>{jay'} might be "generic", but it is not bland.  If you want to express
>surprise with an intense invective, say {mumer jay'!}  If you want to
>express disgust with an intense invective, say {vImuS jay'!}  If you want
>to express dismay with an intense invective, say {jIQuchHa' jay'!} or maybe
>{jIpuQ jay'!}
>

But these are expressions of state modified by {jay'}.  I'm suggesting
that there are terms we don't know yet that could be used to modify
other kinds of statements the same way {jay'} does.  To the plain
statement {ghoS Duj}, we can add {jay'} and get a general statement of
intensity: {ghoS Duj jay'}; but is the speaker happy, sad, surprised,
dismayed?  Who knows?  You could add one of your above phrases (eg.
{ghoS Duj, vaj vImuS jay'.}, but I think its reasonable to believe
that Klingons have other types of intensifiers that can do the work of
your phrases in a single word.

Again you misunderstand.  I'm not forgetting that {jay'} exists, just
speculating that those endlessly inventive Klingons might have other
terms similar but not identical to {jay'} for use in other situations.
Look at all the ways humans have to curse and to express their feelings
about an utterance.  Do you really think that Klingons would restrict
themselves to the one word {jay'}?

>
>-- ghunchu'wI'
>
>
-- ter'eS

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