[Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Word of the Day: qo'la' 'awje'

[David Trimboli]

On 5/4/2012 3:50 PM, Felix Malmenbeck wrote:
>
> Seems more likely to me, however, that's it's either a case of Okrand
> forgetting, or somebody (either vavoy or SuSvaj)
> mishearing/mistemembering. Neither of the options seem super-likely,
> though, since the accounts are quite detailed (if either vavoy or
> SuSvaj heard wrong, it seems they didn't just misinterpret a double
> negative) and the time span was a bit short for Marc to have
> forgotten such a detailed account (unless the HolQeD article was
> written long after the actual interview, that is. That HolQeD was
> from June '97 (as far ad I can tell), and qep'a' loSDIch was in July
> 1997, so it's possible SuSvaj had originally read the HolQeD article,
> and was then surprised to learn that what he'd learnt was wrong.

I believe the order of events was:

1. We got the word at a qep'a' and understood it as "root beer." Root 
beer was being mentioned occasionally on Deep Space Nine at that time as 
well, usually being explained, tasted, or enjoyed by Ferengi or Klingons.

2. We got the HolQeD article, which explained that 'awje' wasn't just 
root beer, but a word describing a narrow class of Klingon soft drinks, 
which resembled root beer enough to be typically translated with that term.

3. We got KGT, which identified 'awje' as a specific beverage, still 
reasonably close to root beer and translated that way.

-- 
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/