tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jan 21 17:12:01 2006
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Re: yopwaH
ja' Shane MiQogh:
> ...De'wI' means informational device which belongs to me...
No. {De'wI'} means "computer", not "my information". If {-wI'} were
the noun suffix meaning "my", it would have to be {-wIj} instead.
Computers are not "capable of speech" in the same way that people are.
I think it's reasonable to presume an unknown or obsolete verb {De'}
related to the noun, making {De'wI'} more literally "thing which
processes information".
> while computer SHOULD be SImwI''a' if you go by english and every
> other language. Basically, a computer is a big calculator.
The equivalence between computer and calculator is historical, not
essential. Computers were invented to carry out computations, so
that's what they're called. But they are more often used today to
store and retrieve information of many sorts, to facilitate
communication, and for general entertainment. Doing number crunching
is almost a niche application these days. I can imagine an
alternative path where what we call computers were developed from
things like teletypes. From the Klingon vocabulary, it looks like
that's what might have happened on Qo'noS.
-- ghunchu'wI'
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