[Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Bird-of-Prey Haynes Manual

[De'vID]

> On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 7:19 PM, Russ Perry, Jr. <russperryjr at sbcglobal.net>
> wrote:
>> Star Trek: Klingon Bird-of-Prey Haynes Manual
>> http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/f03b/?cpg=49183126
[...]

De'vID:
> I actually have an email draft about this sitting in my drafts folder, which
> I hadn't sent yet because of the "30 day moratorium" on new canon.  Amazon
> shows a "publication date" of Oct. 24 and a "release date" of Nov. 6, so we
> are supposed to wait about another week before discussing it.

Since it's Dec. 6 today, the 30 day moratorium is up and we can
discuss the Klingon in this book.

The cover and the three sentences on p.71 have already been posted.
Other than those three sentences, I don't remember any other complete
sentences in the book.  Also, the cover has been discussed on Facebook
(which requires logging in, so if someone wants to summarise that
discussion on this mailing list that'd be great).

There is a glossary of words in the back.  However, I didn't discover
any new words in there.  Some of the English definitions are expressed
differently than definitions we've seen from previous sources.  I
don't think these were provided by Okrand, but rather by someone who
edited the glosses to make them fit the space or to clarify them.

Most of the Klingon words in the body text are straightforward
applications of words we already know.  I think there are three named
weapons whose names are noun-noun constructions using known words.  I
noted a few unusual constructions which I think are errors:
* {'et mu'} appears in the index for "foreword" (obviously someone
just did a word-for-word lookup), which in the text is replaced by
{bI'reS}
* {yoD} is used for "shield" (force field generator), despite the note
in KGT p.167 that the correct word is {botjan}, while {Qan} is used as
a noun meaning armor (i.e., metal plating on a ship); given that we
know {yoD} refers to a plate of metal, I would've used {yoD} for ship
armor
* {DuD} is used as a noun for "manifold"
* {tlhIlHal}, or a corrupted version thereof, is used for "mine" in
the sense of "proximity explosive" rather than "place from which
resources are extracted" - it seems the translator realised this
wasn't the right word and dropped a few letters to make *{tlhHl}
* most of the {pIqaDqoq} corresponds exactly to {tlhIngan Hol}
translations of the accompanying English words (accounting for typos)

There are also a few new words in the body text written in
non-Okrandian style without a corresponding Okrandian spelling, almost
all corresponding to materials used in the ship's construction.
loghaD pointed out to me that one of these words actually fits
Okrandian transcription/phonology, so I'll let him reveal the word and
describe what it means and how it's used.

>From a Klingon-language point of view, this book is disappointing.  We
could've gotten proper words for "manifold (engineering device)" and
"mine (explosive weapon)", as well as various materials used in ship
construction.  As it is, I'm left wondering if *{DuD} was a mistake
(since *{tlhHl} obviously is) and {yoD} is misused (because its use
contradicts its meaning as explained in previous canon).  We have one
possibly genuine {mu' chu'}, but it is in doubt because the rest of
the "Klingon" words in the body text are non-Okrandian, so I don't
know if that one was supplied by Okrand or just happened to
coincidentally match Okrandian Klingon phonology.

--
De'vID