tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 30 17:18:32 1997

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Re: KLBC: insulting

ghItlh ~mark
>What about the wonderful insight we have into Terran societ in the
>following word: I bet you didn't know English-speakers were nocturnal. 
But
>the surely were.  Look at the word "delight".  Such a positive-connotation
>word associated with making things darker ("de-light" removing light, just
>as "de-fragment" is removing fragments or such).  That's OBVIOUSLY the
>origin, and look what we learned about English-speaking society!  Or
>rather, that's what you would think, if you followed the same resoning
with
>English derivations that I see people trying on Klingon words.  Words can
>be old, old things, with origins lost in the mists of time, in extinct or
>foreign languages, etc etc.  And this holds not just true, or doubly true,
>but probably triply true (at least 2.5 times true) for swear words.  Just
>*try* to trace the origin of "shit"!  Not that it can't be done, but it
>goes awfully far back, and doesn't necessarily relate to anything else in
>English (and what is its past tense?  shat?)

This isn't Klingon, but it has bearing on the subject at hand.

"In Boston," said Jane, "it makes sense,
To go for the specialty, hence
I've come to get scrod."
And her friend said, "That's odd,
You've used the past pluperfect tense."

Qapla'
qoror

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