[Tlhingan-hol] Eurotalk - New Words - First Words

[Qov]

At 13:47 04/11/2011, lab SuStel:
>On 11/4/2011 4:33 PM, Qov wrote:
>
>>>bicycle - qam Do Duj
>>
>>Favourite new word from the whole disk. Because I ride a bicycle more
>>often than a puH Duj, because it's a simple translation of velocipede,
>>and because it doesn't confirm or deny whether Klingons have bicycles.
>>I'd think if you can build a warp drive you can build such an
>>astonishingly efficient energy conversion device, but perhaps they never
>>had good enough roads to trigger the invention.
>
>I sometimes wonder if, in the long transition from no' Hol to 
>various ta' Hol, whether words for technology that was no longer in 
>use failed to make the transition. There may be no' Hol terms for 
>airplanes, bicycles, trains, and so forth that have nothing to do 
>with Duj (or the no' Hol word Do'), but the terms for them were 
>simply forgotten. Klingons may not be so attached to old words as we 
>are, and jettison them without concern.

My current theory on the matter is that in the earliest reaches of 
no' Hol the word meant "travois" or "raft" or whatever it was that 
Klingons first devised to assist in transportation. As transportation 
was adapted to new media and new technologies, they used the same 
word and described it if necessary to disambiguate. So whatever the 
dominant means of transportation is at a time and place is the Duj 
and the others get qualifiers. Once upon a time, and probably still 
to someone who unlike malth does not live in a spaceship, that was a 
logh Duj.  They would have to forget old meanings of words pretty 
quickly considering how much of the CVC space is occupied by current 
vocabulary.  (I would love to see some pretty graphs on the subject, 
overall and broken down per vowel and consonant!)

- Qov