tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jan 17 13:39:11 2007
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Klingon WOTD: Hoqra' (noun)
> >>Klingon word: Hoqra'
> >>Part of Speech: noun
> >>Definition: tricorder
Voragh:
> >Apparently consists of {Hoq} "expedition" (n.) + {ra'} "order,
> >command" (v.).
mIq'ey:
>"Expedition" is a synonym for "trek". "Trek" + "order" = "tricorder".
>An Okrandian pun?
> >Okrand's usual gloss for "Trek" is {leng} "trip, voyage" as in {Hov
> >leng} "Star Trek":
> >
> >If it is a pun, I suspect it's much older - maybe even going back to Gene
> >Roddenberry himself. I never saw the connection before, but you could be
> >right. I always thought it was a contraction of "tri + recorder" and
> >wondered which three things it was recording.
>I rather suspect that tricorder was in fact "tri" +
>"recorder". Neologizing by adding new prefixes to existing words is a
>Trek tradition going back to the beginning; just with number prefixes
>alone in TOS, we have, in addition to "tricorder", "dilithium" and
>"quadrotriticale" (off the top of my head). I any
This sounds more likely and is perfectly consistent with other
Trekisms: DI-lithium, TRI-corder, QUADRO-triticale = 2, 3, 4. (Are there
any Trekisms for 1 [mono-/uni-] and 5 [penta-/quint-]?)
>event, I don't see why the coinage of "tricorder" would involve a pun on
>"order", since there's no a priori reason to associate that word with the
>tricorder's function (unless you're reaching for a bilingual pun on the
>French word for computer, "ordinateur", which seems quite far-fetched to me).
>On the other hand, given the word "tricorder", a need to translate it into
>an invented language, and a mind that can come up with such things as
>{ghotI'} and {nughI'}, I can see Okrand noticing that embedded "order" and
>running with it.
This would be classic Okrand. Sometimes he only puns on part of a word to
make it less obvious.
>Of course, this would be a somewhat more convincing speculation if the
>word he'd come up with had been {lengra'} instead.
I don't have it with me, but I believe {Hoqra'} appeared in the original
1985 edition of TKD as did {Hoq} "expedition", which has never been used in
canon. AFAIK the earliest appearance of {Hov leng} "Star Trek" was ten
years later in the special Klingon issue of "Star Trek Communicator" #104
(1995). I wonder if Okrand rejected *{Hov Hoq} in favor of {Hov leng}
because it sounded a little silly or because some might have found it hard
to pronounce if trying to correctly enunciate the two /H/s and the /q/?
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons