tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Dec 12 18:49:38 2001

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Re: The Year of the Horse

lab SuStel

 > I agree with ghunchu'wI' and Voragh: if you're going to do it, follow 
the "an alien > because I name its planet of origin" idea. "Earth sark" 
makes it clearer than
 > just "sark." A little.

I agree with this, and other points, that a Sark is not a horse.  But lets 
say you were living, for an extended period of time on the planet 
Yaggillithia, which was
populated by things that were vaguely like horses, vaguely like pigs and 
vaguely like cats.  You also didn't give a damn about the sentient 
Yaggillithian inhabitants nor what they chose to call their fauna.  How 
long would you go on talking about Yaggillithian horses, Yaggillithian pigs 
and Yaggillithian cats before you starts saying "horse", "pig" and 
"cat"?  Before long you'd have to say "Earth cat" to distinguish the 
occasions when you were talking about an actual cat.

I know that's how I work.  When I travel I see birds that look more or less 
like crows but have white spots or yellow feet or hooked beaks.  I'm still 
going to say "Hey!  A crow stole my mahi mahi!"   I'm not unique.  Human 
travellers used this method to name the robin, the buffalo, the koala 
"bear" or the cedar.

I suspect that SuStel is careful to say "bison" instead of "buffalo", never 
calls koalas "bears," and would have found out that my yellow-footed 
Hawai'ian crow was a mynah bird instead of happily calling it a crow for a 
week.

Klingon travellers strike me as VERY likely to completely ignore both local 
names and superficial differences bestowing any name that comes to mind 
upon the local fauna.

Qugh: torgh!  Ha'DIbaH vIHoHta'!
torgh: nuq 'oH?
Qugh: jISovbe'.  loQ targh rur.
torgh: matlh!  naDev ghoghoS!  targh HoHta' Qugh.
matlh: majQa'.  DaH maSoplaH.

qar'a'?

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