[Tlhingan-hol] tlhIngan Monopoly vISuq rIntaH!

[Terrence Donnelly]

--- On Tue, 12/6/11, qurgh lungqIj <qurgh at wizage.net> wrote:

>On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 3:07 PM, Terrence Donnelly <terrence.donnelly at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>>I guess I wanted to know if Klingons had objects and concepts similar to >>ours, and what the words for those things might be.

>But doesn't the product answer that question? 

Only in the negative; we can infer from the translations what isn't native to them.

>Something as simple as a hamburger to us, is so alien to them that they >have to describe it as some messy lump of meat stuffed between two lumps >of brick made from grain. 

That may be a helpful initial description, but if Klingons were real, I'd bet good money that their actual day-to-day word for "hamburger' would be {Hamburgh'ur).

>but whenever he does that he makes the language a little bit less alien.

As MO himself says, he doesn't really see Klingons using toothpaste (but anything for a buck, I guess). I don't find the language less alien because we sometimes get more precise definitions for true Klingon words; it feels less alien when we get words for "toothpaste".

(To be fair, I don't hate every single thing about TNK. For example, the word for "battery" is a perfectly fine addition to the canon, mainly because I have no trouble seeing both the concept and the word as natively Klingon.)

>qurgh

-- ter'eS