[Tlhingan-hol] The Story of {'I'}

[lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com]

I’m sure that someone else will come along with direct quotes to correct my faulty memory, but the recent discussion of canon vs. fake words begs for a little history lesson.

Seqram, who was one of the first Beginners’ Grammarians, once made a very reasonable argument against anybody making up words that didn’t come from Marc Okrand. He said that it would be quite possible for someone to learn about Klingon from The Klingon Dictionary and other sources and never discover the KLI. How could such a person know, for example that we, here on this mailing list, had all agreed to use [and he made up what he considered to be a ridiculous, but phonetically correct Klingon word] {‘I’} to mean [and here, he chose what he considered to be a silly English word] “armpit”?

So, the argument passed, as it always does (it’s an argument that has repeated itself since the list began) and at least a year passed. There was a movement to collect the canon words that weren’t already in either TKD, or the KLI’s New Words List, and someone brought up the word {‘I’}, meaning “armpit”.

A new round of arguments ensued in which the person who brought it up said that he didn’t remember the source of the word, but he was absolutely sure that it came from Marc Okrand and it NEEDED to be included on the list. After a week or so of arguing about this, ghunchu’wI’ found the origin in the KLI archive and we all had a good laugh.

At the next qep’a’, we decided that it was a good story to tell Marc Okrand. He loves a good joke. We told him and he laughed and we laughed and then we were done laughing and it got quiet, and he smiled, and he said, “Of course, you know that there really IS a Klingon word for ‘armpit’, right?”

Eyebrows went up around the room. Everyone leaned in. People grabbed their pens and pads or their Palm Pilots and styluses. When he felt that he truly had everyone’s devout attention, he uttered, “{‘I’}”

Pandemonium broke out. More laughter all around, and there, by fiat, was born the canon word for “armpit”. Marc enjoys waving his magic wand from time to time.

It’s moments like that which make all those hours creating my fifth version of my vocabulary database worth it.

And it renews my faith in how important it is to note the source of every word we use. A dictionary without sources listed is just a bunch of characters.

lojmIt tI’wI’ nuv ‘utlh
Retired Door Repair Guy