tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Mar 06 17:41:33 1999
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: mu'mey Dajqu'
david joslyn wrote:
>
> tlhIngan mu'mey Dajqu' Sanob
> (I give you some very intereting Klingon words.)
>
Someone else I'm sure will caution you about trying to break
Klingon words down into their components. Marc Okrand himself
has said that you can't assume that even a word that seems
easy to break down (eg. /QongDaq/) is actually made
from the components we think we can isolate. The danger
in this approach is breaking down a word that has only one
component listed in the dictionary, and then trying to make
a meaning for the other component (as if I took the word
/rewbe'/, decided it was made from 'X' + 'woman', and then
tried to use /rew/ by itself to mean 'X'). I think MO's
unwillingness to admit that even the most obvious compounds
are indeed made of existing elements is a warning to us to
prevent this kind of extrapolation.
> Last and certainly best:
>
> Ha'DIbaH - animal. lit. "let's go kill (shoot) them!" From:
> <Ha'> - let's go, and
> <DIbaH> - we fire (missiles/arrows/etc.) at them.
>
This is pretty good. I think you have discovered not the actual
"Klingon"
components of the word, but another example of MO's sense of humor.
We've been compiling lists of single-word puns for a long time (KGT is
_full_ of them), but
as far as I can remember, you're the first to point this one out.
> Are there any more mu'mey Dajqu'? If so let me know; I'm compiling a list.
As amusements or aids to vocabulary learning, such lists are great.
Just don't read
too much into them.
-- ter'eS