tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jul 03 07:58:57 2009
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Re: tera'Daq jIghIQvIS
On Jul 3, 2009, at 10:05 AM, JON BROWN wrote:
> On the possibility that a Klingon vacationed on Earth I assume they
> would for the most part just refer to countries in the nearest way
> they could pronounce them or a transliteration of the sounds. So if
> this happened and they went home and started telling fellow
> Klingons about what they did and wanted to say:
> "While I vacationed on Earth I visited France and Finland."
>
> Is it likely they would say
>
> tera'Daq jIghIQvIS, <vIranIS> <vInlanID> je vISuchta'
Why not transliterate the native name instead of the English one?
{veranSey} "Français" even gets the emphasis on the right syllable.
Getting a little tricky here, I think a cultured speaker of {ta'
tlhIngan Hol} would probably pronounce "Finland" as {vInlIN}, where
the last sound is a Klingon {D} with a little bit of retroflex "n" in
front of it.
> Or So that people knew they were regions or countries of Earth
> rather than any other things that can be visited, would this
> Klingon possibly say:
>
> tera'Daq jIghIQvIS, <vIranS> Sep <vInlanID> Sep je vISuchta'
I'd choose the verb {jaH} "go" instead of {Such} "visit", to at least
partially remove the ambiguity. That way it doesn't imply as
strongly that the foreign names refer to people. But KGT suggests
that using {Sep} is probably the way to go.
> That said if a Klingon came across countries names or part names
> that they could translate into Klingon, would they bother.
>
> e.g. would they be tempted to say [wo'Hom DIvI'Sep] instead of say
> [<unayteD qIngDom> Sep] for United Kingdom. Assuming of course that
> [wo'Hom] could be used for Kingdom.
Marc Okrand bothered. :) He translated "United Kingdom" as {wo' tay'}
"together empire".
> I suppose this guesswork should be based on how people of earth
> name other countries... Do they make up new names, transliterate
> all or part of a name and translate the rest. Unfortunately that's
> something I don't know but may be someone here has an insight into.
The Klingon Dictionary indicates that place names are at least
sometimes transliterated. "Sherman's Planet" becomes {SermanyuQ},
for example. {tera'} for "Earth (Terra)" is another example, though
slightly obscured.
-- ghunchu'wI'