tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 21 18:33:56 2000

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Reversals for puns



qa'ral:
|> Klingon word:   tar
|> Definition:     poison
| 
| Hmm...Stretching for puns again, *tar* is presumably toxic if consumed in 
| sufficient quantities, but I have to guess *rat* poison is closer to the 
| mark here.

charghwI': 
> If this is true, it would be the first, and to my knowledge 
> ONLY example of Okrand spelling a word backwards to make a 
> pun. Clever of you to notice it, but I don't think this works.

You mean spelling a word backwards *in English*, qar'a'?  If so, you'd be
wrong.  They are quite rare, though; I can only find two others:

  pID  "coat (food) with herbed mixture" KGT ["dip" backwards]

  Sa'Qej  "Sakrej" (GN) KGT [*{jeQ'aS} (i.e. jackass) backwards!]

(As for the latter, Okrand says: "This region is the source of many odd
pronunciations and grammar, some of which have been more widely adopted as
slang" (KGT p.24).  More than one person has suggested that the possible
derivation of {Sa'Qej} is a comment about Paramount's writers, or some of
the actors Okrand has been forced to coach, or both.  AFAIK, Okrand himself
has been too polite to comment further.)

As ~mark reminds us, however, Okrand has indeed spelled Klingon words
backwards to generate new words.

~mark wrote:
: Oh, and as for reversals for puns, what about megh/ghem and pogh/ghop?
: Admittedly a different sort of wordplay...

I suspect we'll find there are a lot more of these reversals - {mu'mey yoy}
"upside down words"? - than we suspected once we start looking for them.  

Here are two more pair off the top of my head:  puq/qup and lom/mol.


-- 
Voragh                       
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons 


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