tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Apr 23 08:47:38 1999
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<nugh> for nation
- From: Carleton Copeland <[email protected]>
- Subject: <nugh> for nation
- Date: Fri, 23 Apr 1999 19:48:14 +-400
jatlh!
I'd like to nominate (society, group of people) (or perhaps some compound containing <nugh>) as an alternate translation of *nation*.
I'm no political scientist and no more than an aspiring Klingonist, but as I understand it, a *nation* is neither a place nor a political formation but a *people* with a shared history, culture, territory, etc. A nation usually exerts or seeks to exert political control over the territory with which it identifies, and the belief that a nation needs its own state and that the world is naturally composed of such *nation-states* is what we generally mean by *nationalism*. When we (as at least we Americans tend to do) use the words *nation* and *state* interchangeably, we are forgetting that the two often do not coincide and that several centuries of international conflict have been unable to put it right.
qa'ral
P.S. I'm still hoping for an answer to my question about Klingon names.