Re: jIH vIchuHlu' - Words mentioned earlier but not in the

[willm@cstone.net]

As keeper of the New Words List, I've made one of my extremely rare contacts 
with Okrand. I REALLY don't like bothering him. This is the first time I've 
contacted him in several years. 

Anyway, he confirms that there was some limited communication about the 
vocabulary of the novel. All the words came from Keith, mostly from the Star 
Trek Encyclopedia (with their unpronounceable spellings) and a few words that 
were just like we thought they were, existing words with a couple affixes 
thrown on. All of the definitions are Keith's.

The only thing Okrand provided were spellings using his Romanized alphabet we 
use so commonly. He mentioned that he wasn't sure whether he'd be helping me or 
hindering me in terms of what really belongs on the New Words list because of 
items like {Qang}, which already means "chancellor", but Keith used it to refer 
to a class of battleship. Likely, nobody else has used that word for a class of 
battleship except that one author in that one book. Do I put in an entry 
because of that?

I'm not inclined to. The fictional history of the Star Trek world is very 
splintered, between movies, several TV series, novels, cartoons, posters, and 
those commemorative plates, chess sets, etc. I don't really feel like I want to 
chase down every splinter. I think those entries are more appropriately 
recorded in The Extended Corpus Project. I'd prefer to stick to words that 
Okrand was a little more instrumental in providing to us.

Most likely, I'll add Okrand's spelling of Stovokor and leave it at that until 
Okrand gets back to me (IF he gets back to me) on the specific items on the 
list. He can't get to that right now. qay'be'. I'm not interested in annoying 
the man.

Stuff like this feels like I'm deeply engaged in a really interesting card game 
with friends who have been into the game for a long time, and there are these 
annoying people who don't want to learn how to play, but they want to keep 
adding their cards to the deck, and they wonder why the players aren't thrilled 
about the idea.

Will

> ja' Lawrence:
> >Your memory of the specifics is better than mine, so correct me if I blur the
> >actual events.
> 
> I can't correct the record of anything I didn't see.
> 
> >...I told [Keith} to
> >send me a list of any other items he needed for his book when he got back to
> >New York and he did so.
> >
> >Now here's where my memory is fuzzy. In all likelihood I farmed out this list
> >for input from various Grammarians. That's what I usually do in such cases,
> >sometimes just for input, sometimes for extended discussion (depending on
> >whether or not the first round of inputs are in agreement). The results were
> >then passed on to Keith.
> 
> I didn't see a list.  All I knew was that he needed a word for "conquered"
> that didn't imply slavery.  (I still like {lujwI'}, by the way.)
> 
> -- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh
>