[Tlhingan-hol] Eurotalk - New Words - Food

[Rohan Fenwick - QeS 'utlh]

jatlhpu' 'anan naHQun:
> bread - tIr ngogh
> cheese - nIm wIb ngogh

jang De'vID, jatlh:
> Do people agree that {nIm wIb} is the word for "cheese" (the substance
> or ingredient) and that {nIm wIb ngogh} refers to a physical block or
> lump of cheese?

Very hesitantly.

But tangentially, this "the word for" thing seems to be becoming common;
it bemuses me a little. To me, what Eurotalk seems to be doing is to say:
"Look, Klingon really *lacks* all these words. But if some Klingon speaker
were to come to Earth and see these Earth things, this is how he might
*describe* it to his friends when he got home." So I can see something
like, "Those Terrans are crazy! They eat this weird food called "cheese",
and what it is is {nIm wIb ngogh}."

But for my part, the fact that Eurotalk seems to be implying all this
makes me shy away from the thought that {nIm wIb} is now "the word for
cheese". It's just how some Klingon chose to explain what cheese is. And
that gives us some good canonical options, but I don't think we should
feel constrained by those. If someone wanted to talk about {nIm QaD} or
{nIm wIb QaDlu'pu'bogh} or {nIm roghmoHlu'pu'bogh} instead, and it gets
the point across, great. (And to me {nIm wIb} could just as well refer
to yoghurt or sour cream. Which is why I'm hesitant about agreeing that
{nIm wIb} is even *a* phrase for cheese, never mind *the* phrase.)

taH:
> What about melted cheese? (There are like a billion kinds of cheese
> with different names here in Switzerland where I'm living.)

SoHvaD Qapbe''a' {tet} "melt"?

> "cheesebread" leghDI' tlhIngan, chay' pong?

Until right now I didn't even know what to call it in English. (The only
time I've ever eaten anything like what you describe was in Georgia, so
I only knew the Georgian name for it, which is "khachapuri".)

QeS 'utlh