tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Mar 08 23:56:54 1997
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Re: bIH chaH ghap
On Sat, 8 Mar 1997, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
|>From: Steven Boozer <[email protected]>
|>Not much help there. Hmm... I wonder which pronouns would be used for
|>language-capable androids like Data and Lore? Worf, I believe, always
|>addressed Data--his superior officer--as "he/him" in Fed Standard, though
|>he may have just been copying the humans around him.
|
|They're beings capable of using language, right? By which I mean not just
|mechanically producing speech-sounds, but with sentient minds of their
|own. Why shouldn't they be "chaH"? Just because they aren't made of
|flesh? That isn't a criterion, is it?
That's certainly a human attitude. Which is exactly my point: would
*Klingons* other than Worf consider a robot (qoq), even a talking robot, to
be a "being" or a "thing"? After all, in the 24th century computers
routinely talk and can even conduct conversations. Do you refer to your
De'wI' as "ghaH"? Cdr Maddox, LtCdr Hobson and Dr Pulaski all had trouble
considering Data to be a "being", to name just three humans off the top of
my head. Have we ever seen Klingons interacting with Klingon androids in
Klingon? For that matter, do Klingons even use androids?
And keep in mind that in Star Trek (especially the Original Series)
computers have an annoying tendency to become *fully* sentient... and then
try to take over your ship or exterminate the biological infestations
aboard. {{;-)
There actually was a 1987 fan novel (Rick Endres' "The Daystrom Project")
which considered this idea: the Klingons kidnapped Dr Richard Daystrom and
forced him to construct another multitronic super-computer with *Klingon*
engrams. Then... well, you can imagine the rest! Well worth reading. It
even had quite a bit of fairly good tlhIngan Hol considering that TKD was
only published in 1985.
-- Voragh