[Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Word of the Day: mung

[De'vID]

jaSwa':
> And I likewise erred: "nargh" means "appear" rather than the opposite (a word meaning "disappear" and one meaning "escape" that are spelled and pronounced the same are possibly similar enough to just be the same word rather than homonyms).

TKW p. 144 hints at why {nargh} means both "escape" and "appear" in
Klingon.   Regarding the saying {HeghDI' SuvwI' nargh SuvwI' qa'}:

<The verb {nargh}, found in the saying cited above, means "escape",
but the same word, or a phonetically identical one, means "appear".
Thus, perhaps the Klingons are saying that when a warrior dies, his
spirit appears, whereas prior to death it was hidden or disguised by
the body.  Another interpretation is that the spirit was held prisoner
by the body.>

This is different from the usual Federation Standard way of thinking
about things, where an escaped prisoner has "disappeared" (from the
point of view of his captors).  In the Klingon way of thinking, an
escaped prisoner has actually "appeared" (i.e., to the outside world).
 To escape ({nargh}) is not an act of hiding to a Klingon, but an act
of liberation.

--
De'vID