tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 11 07:49:31 2010

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RE: Hypothetical (reconstructed) vocabulary?

Terrence Donnelly ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

--- On Mon, 1/11/10, Steven Boozer <[email protected]> wrote:

> >> Over the weekend I began compiling a list of
> hypothetical (reconstructed)
> >> vocabulary, chiefly from compound nouns.  
> >>    [....]

This is an interesting project. Here's another set of words:

pu' pu'HIch pu'beH pu'bej DaSpu'

lay'tel SIvten:
> > *{pIv} could also be translated as any of the other
> stock science
> > (fiction) terms for a faster-than-light drive:
> faster-than-light/FTL,
> > jump, hyper(space/drive), star(drive), etc. It could
> even mean 'magic'
> > or 'inter-'. Then there's the possibility that Klingon
> physicists have
> > a completely different approach to physics or this
> area of physics as
> > compared to Terran physicists. "Warp" drive, field,
> factor, etc., is
> > an idiom, and to carry it over as a direct translation
> of hypothetical
> > *{pIv} seems to me to be imprudent, at best. We simply
> don't know what
> > {pIv} means. Doesn't Star Trek also have other 'warp'
> phrases, such as
> > 'warp core'? Do we have equivalents of these in
> Klingon?

When I took technical Russian many years ago, I remember thinking that you could really tell that Russian came from a peasant culture, since even the most technical terms were built from very basic words. For example, <vodarod> 'hydrogen' is literally 'water-born', and the word for 'acid' is <okis'>, or 'pickle', so that sulphuric acid is literally 'pickled sulphur'.  Seeing Klingon words like {voqSIp} and {yInSIp} makes me think that Klingon is similar, so that, whatever {pIv} means, it's likely to be something very simple and basic, maybe 'fold' or even 'bubble'.

When I look at the word {pu'}, I think it can't possibly mean just 'phaser'. I was always taught that the simplest words in a language were generally the oldest and most basic, and I can't see why Klingons would consider 'phaser' a basic term, especially since it's not even a Klingon technology. It must be an older, simpler term, extended to cover phasers in the modern era. I've always wished that {pu'} was the word for 'lightning strike', based on a concept of what a phaser beam might look like and its use to also mean 'spike' in {DaSpu'}.

-- ter'eS

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