tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 10 14:15:57 2000

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Re: The song heard in "Barge of the Dead" (was Re: Klingon Opera)


jatlh ghunchu'wI' 'utlh:
> An excerpt from Voragh's Notes on Klingon Writing and Literature:
> >       Ej im-ta fey de-ja I...
> >       Ejadahk-so-tas ghoS va Skral byteek
> >         Empa jaj law-moch jaj-push
> >       Jaj Kayless Molor-mIgh Hohk-chew koo!
> >In English, this is (from "The Way of the Warrior" novel):
> >        And the blood was ankle deep...
> >        And the River Skral ran crimson red
> >          On the day above all days
> >        When Kahless slew evil Molor dead!


I found a recording of it on the web, so I listened to it while
keeping in mind the (supposed) meaning of each line.  Here is what
I came up with:

1: 'ej ngIbDaq vI'DI' SaH 'Iw.
2: 'ej Doq SoDtaH tlhoS va *Skral bIQtIq 'em pa'.  
3: jaj law' moch jaj puS.
4: jaj qeylIS molor mIgh HoHchu'qu'.

Comments:
Does anyone know if MO did this?  Parts of it sound like tlhIngan Hol
enough.  Did something get lost in transcribing it, or was this the
work of an actual Paramount writer who put effort into it? (*gasp*)
I'd like to find out.

1. I hear <ngIbDaq> rather than the <*im-ta>, probably because I'm
thinking "at the ankle".  My selection of words sort of makes sense
if a writer thought <-DI'> meant "when" (instead of "as soon as").
Perhaps an attempt at "When the blood was accumulated, it was present
up to the ankle"?

2. I hear <*Sab> or <*jab> where I had written <Doq> above, but
the transliteration gives "(Eja)dahk" and the line is missing the
word "red", so maybe this is it.  The middle of the sentence is
really screwed up.  I think I hear the name of the river twice.
Something like <...SoDtaH *SI'ghol va *Skral...>.  Maybe they 
asked MO (or someone) to transliterate "Skral", and it was
returned <*SI'ghol>, but when they wrote the song they put the
name twice by mistake?  Or, it could be <tlhoS> "virtually",
i.e. "the river was virtually flooded red", i.e. indicating
that the redness is a metaphor? (The transliteration says <ghoS>
though so I'm probably wrong.)  I tacked <'em pa'> (that's
what I heard) to the end of this, because it didn't seem to
belong with line #3.  <bIQtIq 'em pa'> "river's behind area,
there", maybe the river banks?

3 & 4. I hear the words pretty clearly.

3. The <'em pa'> didn't belong here so I assumed it went with the
previous sentence.  Whoever put this to music probably didn't know
where the line breaks were anyway.  This is an obvious attempt to
say "(This) day is superior to (all other) days", using TKD 6.6,
but whoever did it substituted stuff in all the wrong places.
(The <pa'> possibly belongs with the first <jaj>, maybe the writer
didn't know how to say "that day" and thought he could use
"there day".)  Perhaps there was confusion due to the similarity 
of <moch> and <Hoch>, and the similarity between <jaj> (which 
is the thing being compared) with <jaq> (which is the quality 
being compared used for the example in TKD 6.6).  It should be 
something like <jaj(vam) moch law' Hoch (jaj) moch puS>.  

4. Except for grammar (which could be excused for reasons of
poetic license) this line is perfectly understandable.  I like. =)
Especially the <HoHchu'qu'> for "slew ... dead".  I dunno.  This
line looks as if whoever wrote it knew what he was doing.
Maybe MO originally wrote it and some writer revised the rest
of it.  

Well, that's as much as I made of it.

--
De'vID



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