tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 23 08:18:58 1998

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Re: DS9: Once More into the Breach



On Sun, 22 Nov 1998 23:46:55 -0800 (PST) David Trimboli 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> From: William H. Martin <[email protected]>
> 
> >If you want to study tlhIngan Hol spoken by actors, rent the
> >movies. ST3 (Search for Spock) is an especially good example.
> >ST5 (the one that Shatner directed) has some especially BAD
> >examples of Klingon, but the vocabulary is all valid). ST6 (The
> >Undiscovered Country) has some good Klingon in it, plus some
> >garbled syllables none of us have been able to figure out.
> 
> I'm not quite sure how you come to this conclusion.  The Klingon in Star
> Trek V is quite good: for the most part, well-pronounced and grammatical.

There are basic flaws in a lot of the Klingon spoken there, like 
placing the conjunction {je} BETWEEN nouns instead of following 
them and such. It does have its share of changed subtitles, like 
the line about space junk not testing the warrior's mettle. I 
have less problems with that, but I did not see that kind of 
blatant error in ST3 as the misplaced conjunction, or the 
jumbled mess about the captain's merits. I'll agree with you on 
ST6, though I don't remember anything in ST6 that was clear and 
wrong, while in ST5, I do remember things that were both clear 
and wrong, and also right, but badly pronounced. ST6 just had 
really good stuff mixed together with stuff that was completely 
undecipherable. The only clear error there was {-vIS) without 
{-taH}.

> It has about as many errors as the dialogue in Star Trek III. 

Care to point out any of those errors?

> And in Star
> Trek VI we only get some mumbled Klingon and quick phrases, and Christopher
> Plummer calling out {taH pagh taHbe'}, but the only scene with extended
> Klingon conversation in it has a lot of unintelligible or badly pronounced
> lines.

You mean you didn't understand that line about {wawa wah 
wawawaaaa} as that guy spread the map on the table?
 
> SuStel
> Stardate 98890.4

charghwI' 'utlh



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