tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Nov 20 15:44:45 1997
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Re: KLBC: insulting (my 2 cents)
ja' QatanI:
>...Many english words get
>their root from other languages like french, latin, and the like. Klingon
>(in reality) has no such rich source for it's root words.
Think again. :-) Klingon has a *very* rich source for its words:
the people who write the scripts for Star Trek. Much of our recently
revealed vocabulary can be traced -- in reality, not in the fantasy
of Klingons as a real race with a real culture -- to odd sounds and
mangled grammar we hear from the actors. And it's fun to notice the
jokes that went into making words like {maHpIn} and {runpI'}. Often
it's painful, but pain can be fun too.
Of course, that's Real Life (tm) etymology. There are still a few
"fantasy" etymologies to be found, like the origin of {qa'meH}. How
what is effectively a pair of verb suffixes came to be a noun is an
interesting story, and it stays completely within the "Klingons are
real" framework. Why {qajunpaQ} means "audacity" is admittedly sort
of a mixed bag; the script used the word, and Okrand decided to have
some fun with its explanation.
-- ghunchu'wI'