tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 10 15:20:24 2003
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"No man is an island" (was Re: parmaqqay bomvaD)
Eric Andeen:
> > To describe an island, I usually use some variation of <puH Dechbogh bIQ>.
marqoS:
>Which could, unfortunately, refer just as easily to the entire main
>landmass of Kronos - or any other land that doesn't happen to be on an
>arid planet. I would think *puHHom was a possibility, except that
><puH> seems to be a collective (Voragh?) - don't know if we can refer
>to "a land", which would seem to be required to refer to a "landlet".
marqoS is probably thinking of {Hatlh} "country, countryside". {puH}
"land" has never been used in canon, nor is it mentioned AFAIK in KGT so we
can't tell if it's a collective, mass or count noun.
The only relevant quotes WRT "land" I could find in KGT are:
The Klingon Homeworld {Qo'noS}, usually rendered Kronos in Federation
Standard,
is a planet with basically one very large mass of land surrounded by ocean;
perhaps continent is a comparable concept. (KGT 16)
Some houses are particularly wealthy, controlling vast lands by means of
armed
forces loyal to the particular house. (KGT 36)
If the High Council determines an action to be dishonorable, not only may it
remove the leader of a house from the Council itself, it may also seize the
house's lands, forces, and other holdings. (KGT 37-38)
Other words having to do with land are {yotlh} "field", {lam} "dirt", {yav}
"ground" and {ghor} "surface (of planet)". As yet, we don't know whether
the correct translation of "lands" in the last two citations would be
{puHmey} - but if it's not, I can't think of another.
Beginners should note that {Hatlh} "country" is not used in the political
sense, merely the geographical (i.e. city vs. country, urban vs.
rural). For that we can use {Sep} "region" as Okrand explains:
Within the land mass are distinct areas, some of which are demarcated
geographically (divided by a mountain range, for example), while the
boundaries of others seem rather arbitrary, the result, no doubt, of
ancient power struggles. A specific area whose borders are definable,
by whatever means, is normally called a {Sep}, commonly translated as
"region", though, since the regions were politically distinct in the past,
"country" might have at one time been just as appropriate a translation.
(KGT, 16)
To get back to "continent", the KLI has used *{Hatlh'a'} on its website for
this in the past. (I.e.: The KLI has members on several
*{Hatlh'a'mey}!) Personally I like naHQun's coining of *{bIQpuH} for
"island", as this gives us *{bIQpuH'a'} for "continent", which for some
undefined reason I prefer to *{Hatlh'a'}, which itself is not a bad
rendering of "land mass".
Now, I want to use these to try translating John Donne's famous line:
No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main...
--
Voragh "Damage control is easy. Reading Klingon
- that's
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons hard!" (Montgomery
Scott, STIV)