tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 06 12:54:03 1998

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The origin of {baH} "fire"?

In a discussion about Clipped Klingon, Glen Proechel passed on this
interesting
idea, which I thought I'd share it here:

  First, let me comment on /baH/. Doohan, who knows some Russian, MUST
  have gotten this from Russian. In Russian [bakh] pronounced /baH/ 
  means BANG! as in a gun shot.  I can't help but believe that this
  was deliberate on the part of Doohan, despite protestations by the
  Philistines.

What Glen means is that /bakh/ is the onomatopoetic sound Russians make when
they point their finger at you while imitating the sound of a gun firing, like
English "bang! bang!"  

[For those who weren't aware of it, Glen speaks Russian and worked just
recently as a Lutheran missionary for about a year in Khabarovsk, where
gunfire
and the local criminal gangs (called "mafiyas") are often discussed in the
post-Soviet chaos.  I'm embarrassed that I didn't recognize this, but when I
studied in Moscow during the reign of Brezhnev (1977), the Soviet Union was a
much more peaceful place -- so much so that Russians call this the "period of
stagnation".]

{baH} "fire, launch (a torpedo, rocket, missile)" first appeared in "Star
Trek:
The Motion Picture" during the scene where the IKS Amar and her squadron
encountered V'Ger.  The unnamed Klingon captain -- played by Mark Lenard
(a.k.a. Sarek) -- raises his hand in preparation for the order to fire:

  SSS... baH!
  Ready... Fire!

{baH} was one of the eleven original Klingon words created by James Doohan and
spoken by Lenard (through a set of prosthetic teeth) in the opening scene of
STMP which Marc Okrand used as the basis for tlhIngan Hol.  Doohan is a gifted
actor who can imitate with uncanny accuracy a wide variety of voices and
accents.  Canadian Doohan does not have a trace of a Scottish burr, a fact
which surprises fans who meet in in real life.  In fact, it was he who spoke
(uncredited) most of the lines uttered by off-camera, disembodied voices (such
as computers, non-humanoid aliens and audio transmissions from Starfleet
Command) during the original series (TOS) and, I believe, in some of the
movies
as well.

Okrand discussed this, inter alia, on startrek.klingon (1 Apr 1998):

  The Klingon dialogue in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was devised by
  James Doohan and spoken by Mark Lenard, who, of course, played the Klingon
  commander in that film.  My understanding is that Doohan recorded the
  dialogue on tape and Lenard then listened to the tape and wrote down what
  he heard in a way that would help him learn the lines.  To the best of my
  knowledge, Lenard's handwritten transcription of this tape is the only
  written version of what Doohan made up.  (There was more made up than
  actually ended up in the film.  Some of this additional dialogue can be
  heard -- though without benefit of subtitles -- in a scene where we see
  the Klingon commander on a viewscreen on a Federation monitoring station.
  But the Federation folks are talking through all of this, so the Klingon
  dialogue can't be heard very clearly.)  I don't know whether at the time
  Doohan made the recording he or Lenard or anybody else knew which phrases
  would go with which subtitles or whether subtitles were changed after the
  filming was done. (Having said that, the command meaning "fire [a
  torpedo]!" -- which I transcribed as {baH} but which also sounds kind of
  like {maH} -- must have always had that meaning, since it's there a couple
  of times.  [The {H} is pronounced like the final {ch} in the name of the
  composer Bach.])  My involvement with Klingon began with "Star Trek III."
  In devising the Klingon dialogue for that film, I first listened to the
  lines spoken in "The Motion Picture,"  copied the subtitles, and
  transcribed phonetically what Lenard was saying.  I also imposed a
  structure on the lines, deciding, for example, whether the phrase
  pronounced something like "June tah," subtitled as "Evasive," was one word
  or two. (I decided it was one, made up of two parts:  {jun} "take evasive
  action" and {taH}, a suffix indicating that the action is of a continuing
  or ongoing nature.)

Someone should ask James Doohan about this the next time they see him at a
convention or other Trek event.  Even if he doesn't remember why he came up
with each of his "Klingon" words, we can find out whether he knows some
Russian
(perhaps he learned some for an acting job) and, thus, may have pulled
something out of his memory unconsciously.


_________________________________________________________________________
Voragh                            "Grammatici certant et adhuc sub judice
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons      lis est."         Horace (Ars Poetica)

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