tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Feb 28 09:32:58 2003
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Re: KLBC love
From: "chepqu" <[email protected]>
> /bang/ means "love" or "one who is loved". Are there any restrictions on
the
> meaning of that word? Thinking of tlhIngan Hol the same fictional way the
> KLI seems to think about it; there should exist a verb for "love". It's
just
> that the Federation linguists hadn't discovered it, so there is much work
> left in researching the Klingon culture.
This does not follow. In different languages, there are often words that
exist in one that don't exist in another.
Given the Klingon propensity to drink and toast, one might conclude that
there must be a noun for "drink" or "beverage." But there isn't. We have
been told (in KLINGON FOR THE GALACTIC TRAVELER) that there is no such word.
(There IS a word for "alcohol", /HIq/, but if you're talking about a
non-alcoholic beverage you have to name the beverage.)
English has a word "love." This word is used in an incredibly broad way.
It can mean a gazillion different things. Looking it up in the dictionary
may reveal a dozen entries, or more, depending on your dictionary.
Klingon does not have such a word so far as anything we've been told, and
the fact that "love" has been translated using some other word at least once
in canon suggests that there is no such word. Instead, Klingons are more
specific. Instead of saying "I love this bloodwine," a Klingon might say
/muDuQ 'Iw HIqvam/ "this bloodwine stabs me" (this idiom appears in KGT).
Instead of saying "I love my wife," he might say /munongmoH be'nalwI'/ "My
wife makes me passionate." Instead of saying "I love to kill Romulans," he
might say /romuluSnganpu' vIHoHDI' jISeychoH/ "I become excited when I kill
Romulans." Klingons describe the feeling or effect more narrowly than we do
with love.
> But what makes me wonder about this is that there does
> exist a noun and yet the verb is absent, that's odd.
Not at all. Klingon has a lot more emphasis on verbs than on nouns. There
are verbs for "rain," "snow," and "storm," but no corresponding nouns.
There's "hate" but not "hatred." There's "be passionate" but not "passion."
Some of these can be created, with more narrow meaning, using /-ghach/, but
the fact is that they're not root words.
SuStel
Stardate 3161.2