[85171] in tlhIngan-Hol
RE: nIyma'
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven Boozer)
Mon Nov 24 10:20:22 2008
From: Steven Boozer <sboozer@uchicago.edu>
To: "'tlhingan-hol@kli.org'" <tlhingan-hol@kli.org>
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:15:15 -0600
In-Reply-To: <20081123181610.217910@gmx.net>
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Marc Okrand wrote to Quvar:
> Maltz was very surprised. He said, "Where did they learn that word?" It
> turns out, {nIyma'} is the Klingon word for "phantom" or "apparition" --
> something that seems to appear, but isn't really there. It's not the same
> as "ghost," which is the spirit of a dead person (and may or may not look
> like that person, or may not be visible at all), and it's not the same as
> "spirit" (or {qa'}), which is sort of a life force within a person (that
> escapes when a person dies and may exist somewhere somehow). He said
> using {qa'} for "ghost" was OK, but I got the impression there may be
> another word as well (though he didn't offer one).
chong! The Klingon Shakespeare Restoration Project (KSRP) could have used this in the Klingon Hamlet instead of *{lomqa'} for "ghost" (also used in the Klingon Bible Translation Project [KBTP]). Note that Marc is still being coy about the actual Klingon word for "ghost".
I wonder if you could use {nIyma'} for "hologram" -- particularly the interactive 3-dimensional ones we saw on TNG-era Federation holodecks?
> He said that although
> the word doesn't really mean "invited guest that doesn't show up," it made
> a lot of sense to him to use {nIyma'} to refer to such a person.
This is the opposite of {'elI'jaH} "uninvited guest ({meb}), unexpected visitor" -- someone who was not invited but does show up. Nice.
--
Voragh
Canon Master of the Klingons
