tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 30 15:44:53 1997
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Re: KLBC: insulting (my 2 cents)
>Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 15:20:18 -0800 (PST)
>From: [email protected]
>
>I studied the ethymology of english for one year and it relates to the root
>or origin of a word. Saying fat+her=father is silly. 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.
But Klingons words don't necessarily have their roots in reality. Just
because Okrand made up certain monosyllabic roots, is he constrained to
making polysyllabic roots *necessarily* derive from them? Not at all!
Indeed, he says in KGT that some words in tlhIngan Hol come from extinct
ancient forms, or extinct other Klingon languages, or languages of other
races.... sound familiar? He needn't have actually invented those other
languages, but it certainly points to another possible avenue by which
Klingon words could have been formed than from obvious concatenation of
known roots. Okrand is completely within his rights to have included words
with non-trivial etymologies (I've been studying etymology for quite a few
years myself); why necessitate that he didn't?
~mark