tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 24 11:16:34 2005

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Re: Klingon Spoken on Enterprise

Steven Boozer ([email protected])



"Jeanne Berryman" <[email protected]> wrote:

>Work won't let me post to the list, so I'm sending this to Voragh, Ca'Non 
>Master of the Klingons !

Forwarded.

>A delirious Hoshi spouted some Klingon on the most recent episode of 
>Enterprise, Observer Effect. My closed captions just said [speaking Klingon].

My captions said the same thing.  I played it a couple of times, but all I 
could get was the first and last words:

   /jiNEH [...] kaPLAH/

I'm guessing this first is {jIneH} "I want(ed) to ..." (with the final /H/ 
pronounced silently as in English).  Since Trek writers have long used 
{Qapla'} as a general farewell, the whole thing appears to be an attempt to 
say "I want to say/tell them good-bye".  In proper Klingon this would be 
something like:

   (chaH) vIja' vIneH, <<Qapla'>>.
   I wanted to tell them, "Qapla'".

or

   chaHvaD jIjatlh vIneH, <<Qapla'>>.
   I wanted to say to them, "Qapla'".

IIRC before this she said (according to the captions) *Ya khochu skazat' do 
svidaniya* - which is Russian for "I want to say good-bye" - and roughly 
the same thing in Spanish or Portuguese.  She was apparently saying the 
same thing over and over in her various languages.  If you recall, Hoshi 
was obsessing over the fact that when she joined Enterprise to return Klaag 
to Kronos, she didn't have time to tell her students "in the Brazilian rain 
forest" good-bye.  My take was that she broke out of quarantine because she 
wanted to go to her communications console on the Bridge and contact her 
students before she died.

>The episode was written by the Reeves-Stevens, who know their Trek, so it 
>might be something.

They may know Trek (it was nice to see Organians again), but not 
Klingon.  This line was a disappointment, particularly considering the 
excellent, if somewhat hesitant, Klingon Brent Spiner spoke a few weeks ago 
in "The Augments".  Obviously, whoever helped the writers then wasn't 
available for this episode.



--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons






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