Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2011 00:14:54 -0400
Subject: Nine New Words from qep'a' 18
From: "ghunchu'wI' 'utlh" [email protected]
To: [email protected]

During a pre-lunch lull in the activities at this year's qep'a', Marc
Okrand brought out a stack of paper containing the lyrics to an
expanded version of the opera 'u'. He asked a group of us if we
could read it and make comments and suggestions. He told us that not
all of it was his work, so it was fine to point out and fix problems
as we encountered them. We didn't have to feel compelled to accept
unusual constructions or apparent mistakes as correct.

Along with a few easily corrected typographical errors and some simple
(and forgivable) grammatical blunders, the following eight previously
unseen words appeared in the lyrics we examined. Most were perfectly
understandable from context (which included the English version of the
text), but we didn't actually get definitive translations or
explanations from Marc the way TKD's glossary presents things. He
consistently urged us to understand the meaning based on usage, rather
than by relying on a specific but perhaps misleading translation.

Oh, and on the day we were doing this, we had all "taken the vow" to
speak no English. That twist didn't even occur to me until we were
well into the task and had already teased out the meaning of several
of the words. My original presentation of these words was in Klingon
because that's how I learned them.



jul (n) - sun

This is a general term for a planet's sun. It is not the name of a
specific sun.

pan (v) - spark, emit sparks

As the duel between Kahless and Molor continues, the opera repeats
a phrase several times: pan qeylIS betleH 'ej jach molor 'etlh
"Kahless's batlh'etlh sparks and Molor's sword roars." I might not be
remembering the lyrics exactly, so please don't take them as perfect
canon.

le'yo' (n) - pride

Just to be clear, this describes an emotion, as opposed to a tribe of lions.

nqIq (n) - singular one, individual one

There were two distinct examples of this word's use seen in the
opera. One of them was obviously detailing how a group of warriors was
killed one at a time: ngIq nuv luHoH "they killed the warriors one
by one." The other was a thrice-repeated ngIq tonSaw lo' 'ej... "in
one single move, he...", making it clear that each of several results
was the result of the same action. I surmise that ngIq by itself
could mean "the one and only". Again, I didn't copy the lyrics, and
what I have written here is probably not exactly what was on the pages
we inspected.

Hun (n) - /Khrun/, type of animal

I didn't read that section of the opera myself, but I think I heard
someone say it was a fast animal. The khrun is described in other
resources as a Klingon riding animal. Note: this isn't the way we saw
it in the draft of the opera. After being reminded that the name of
the animal had been given a tlhIngan Hol rendering in Keith
DeCandido's book "A Burning House", Marc Okrand decided to use the
already published spelling.


QIncha' (n) - /Krincha/, type of animal

The English accompanying the opera said "Krincha, short and
fierce". I found references to a "Krencha" in several places,
including the KLI's Extended Corpus Project and the Memory Beta wiki.
It is described as a large, quick lizard native to Qo'noS, variously
said to have either four or six legs. I suspect that the opera's
author intended to invoke that animal but misspelled its name.

yIr (v) - gather

This was used in a command for a warrior to gather his armor and
weapons before a battle. Before seeing this word, I might have used
boS "collect" to refer to packing for a trip. Now, yIr seems a
better choice.

'o (excl) - O

'o appears before a name used as direct address. As we saw it
used, it acted a little like a vocative prefix: 'o qeylIS, qeylIS,
qeylIS... It seems to be an honorific exclamation, or maybe it's just
used for direct address in general and doesn't actually have the
implication of deference or reverence that I inferred. If it hadn't
been consistently present when the opera "speaks to" Kahless, and
consistently absent when it "speaks to" Molor, I might have ignored it
as an unimportant background sound. English has almost exactly the
same sound with pretty much the same meaning: "O Mouse, do you know
the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O
Mouse!" (from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)




One further word was heard as the qep'a' was coming to a close:

wel (v) - owe (someone)

When someone has earned a reward but the prize is not yet
available to be given, the person in charge of presenting it can say
qawel "I owe you." It is probably also appropriate when you have
convinced someone to give you some service or product with the
understanding that you will pay for it later.

-- ghunchu'wI'