[Tlhingan-hol] is there a word for "darth" ?

[Fiat Knox]

George Lucas said that "Darth Vader" is meant to be "Dark Father," a somewhat clumsy way of concealing the fact that Vader happened to be Luke's Dad right at the outset.
So it would be "vav Hurgh" at best. 


     On Sunday, 20 September 2015, 20:28, HoD qunnoQ <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
   
 

 now that i think of it,maybe the most correct way to say it would be "veyDIr Hurgh" ; would i be right to think so ?

On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at 8:30 PM, lojmIt tI'wI' nuv <lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com> wrote:

The short version of the answer:

There is no known Klingon "word" for "Darth".

The explanation, for anyone interested:

First of all, words have meaning, and what, exactly, does "Darth" mean? Is it his first name? Is it his rank? Is it his title?

So far as I know, there's only been one Darth, and I've never heard him referred to as either "Darth" or "Vader". Never anything like, "So, Darth, how's it going?" Never anything like, "Mr. Vader gave you an order!" Every reference to him that I can recall has been the naming pair "Darth Vader". If not for the pause, it might as well be one word: "Darthvader". -- Hmm. Maybe I've heard "Vader" alone, but I don't remember if that was in a movie, or just among people talking about the movies.

Meanwhile, "Darth" is really hard to say in Klingon. The consonants at the end are just all wrong for the language. Attempts to transliterate might come out as {Dargh} or {Datlh} or {Dartlhe'} or {DarSe'} or {Darte'}. Unfortunately, my own guess as to how a Klingon ear might hear it favors {Dargh}, which is the Klingon word for "tea", which is a drink that doesn't get a lot of respect among Klingons, with an emotional connotation quite unlike the dark, fearful effect that "Darth" is clearly intended to convey.

So, if "Darth" is a word and it has a meaning, we need to know what that meaning is before we attempt to find the closest Klingon word to that meaning. If it is more simply a proper noun with a sound, but no meaning, then we need to arbitrarily transliterate that sound, fixing the broken consonant cluster at the end, since the only consonant "r-something" cluster that can end a syllable in Klingon is {-rgh}, and there is no "th" sound in Klingon. We might be tempted to consider {tlh} the equivalent to "th" but it is at least as far from "th" as is {S} or {t}. Likely, {S} is the closest sound to "th".

"Vader" is easier. It would be {veyDIr} or maybe {veyDer}. Again, this is transliteration, not translation, and human pronunciation is not consistent enough to be other than arbitrary in choosing one most accurate transliteration.

Sent from my iPad
lojmIt tI'wI' nuv

> On Sep 20, 2015, at 12:15 PM, HoD qunnoQ <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> nuqneH
>
> i would like to ask if someone knows how to say in Klingon the word "darth" ; "darth" as in "darth vader".
> i am pretty sure that if Klingons existed within the star wars mythos, they would make some of the best Sith lords ever.
>
> Qapla'!
>
>
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