>** The actual name of this team translates literally from the Romulan
>as talons besmeared viridian, the foe's unworthy ichor stains the
>noble plumage. Really.

Ah, the Romulans. They never quite know when to stop.

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

>>** The actual name of this team translates literally from the Romulan
>>as talons besmeared viridian, the foe's unworthy ichor stains the
>>noble plumage. Really.
>
>Ah, the Romulans. They never quite know when to stop.

I dunno, I think that goes so far as to come out the other side. There's something to be said for a language that allows you to express something like that concisely enough to be a club name.

"Mathematics brought rigor to economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis."
- Kenneth Boulding

>>Ah, the Romulans. They never quite know when to stop.
>
>I dunno, I think that goes so far as to come out the other side.
>There's something to be said for a language that allows you to express
>something like that concisely enough to be a club name.

One rather suspects that Romulan is the kind of language where "from Hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee" is one word. And not even a particularly long one.

(Also, one further suspects that the Klingon All-Union Rugby Club is incredibly badass, like the New Zealand All Blacks with cranial ridges.)

--G.
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>>>Ah, the Romulans. They never quite know when to stop.
>>
>>I dunno, I think that goes so far as to come out the other side.
>>There's something to be said for a language that allows you to express
>>something like that concisely enough to be a club name.
>
>One rather suspects that Romulan is the kind of language where "from
>Hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at
>thee" is one word. And not even a particularly long one.

I am reminded of a horrible subbed version of the original "Fist of the North Star" television series that my roommate had on VHS in college (back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth). Several long and involved tirades by Kenshiro had been rather succinctly and, dare I say, sparingly translated. One in particular was a good 30-45 seconds of him regaling the assorted mutant gangers and ganger mutants (and possibly mutated mutants and ganged gangers) that he was about to murderize of the legacy of the his martial arts training and how they were doomed to fail if they faced him in combat and wouldn't it really be better if they all went home, called their mothers and apologized, and took up something productive, like certified accounting. After this stern Japanese monologuing (and I do mean "after" as the subtitle did not appear for at least 10-20 seconds after Kenshiro started talking), the subtitle declared that Kenshiro had said, "You're all pigs."

Sort of the reverse of the Romulan language you propose, but very much in the same vein.

>
>(Also, one further suspects that the Klingon All-Union Rugby Club is
>incredibly badass, like the New Zealand All Blacks with cranial
>ridges.)
>

That's... a compelling image. Haka included, of course.

"To truly appreciate the All Blacks haka, one must hear it in the original Klingon."

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

>Sort of the reverse of the Romulan language you propose, but very much
>in the same vein.

Yes. I think the canonical example in SF would be Ubese, the language Princess Leia speaks when disguised as Boushh in Return of the Jedi, in which "Eii. Ya'to." apparently means, "Tell that fat fuck he'll have to do a helluva lot better than that, or they'll be picking pieces of his slimy hide out of their soup all the way over in Anchorhead, tinpants. This here's a motherfucking thermal detonator, yo."

--G.
That may be a somewhat idiomatic translation.
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>That may be a somewhat idiomatic translation.

I think your Google Translate is stuck on Funkotroni. Just sayin'.

Ebony the Black Dragon

"Life is like an anole. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's brown. But it's always a small Caribbean lizard."

>One rather suspects that Romulan is the kind of language where "from
>Hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at
>thee" is one word. And not even a particularly long one.

"Ih!"
"He's very eloquent."

-- Bob
-------------------
My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.

>One rather suspects that Romulan is the kind of language where "from
>Hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at
>thee" is one word. And not even a particularly long one.

It better be, since the alternatives are either using teeny-tiny letters on the shirt that no-one can read, or a shirt with shoulders three meters across.

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

>(Also, one further suspects that the Klingon All-Union Rugby Club is
>incredibly badass, like the New Zealand All Blacks with cranial
>ridges.)

I would pay a LOT of money to see that haka.

>>(Also, one further suspects that the Klingon All-Union Rugby Club is
>>incredibly badass, like the New Zealand All Blacks with cranial
>>ridges.)
>
>I would pay a LOT of money to see that haka.

The pregame ceremony of the 2406 friendly between the All-Empire and the Bear City Marauders was the number-one video on G-Tube for seventeen straight weeks.

--G.
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Personally I think it would be much more entertaining to watch (albeit from a safe distance) a Hoffmanite Haka. They measure success by how strongly they register on the Richter scale.

>Personally I think it would be much more entertaining to watch (albeit
>from a safe distance) a Hoffmanite Haka. They measure success by how
>strongly they register on the Richter scale.

I am somewhat reminded of a story I read, in which no-one came within 20 feet of Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of the Keys of Hogwarts. This was due to him being EXCEEDINGLY happy, and expressing it by break-dancing.
...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!

>>(Also, one further suspects that the Klingon All-Union Rugby Club is
>>incredibly badass, like the New Zealand All Blacks with cranial
>>ridges.)
>
>I would pay a LOT of money to see that haka.

IIRC, one of the extras on The Lord of the Rings extra super edition DVDs is a bunch of the Orcs (Which were just Maori in Orc drag) dancing a haka where the "defenders of helmsdeep" could see them. I was mildly terrified, and they were, you know, five or six inches tall and my subwoofer can't really make the ground SHAKE like two tons of pissed off dude and armor can. I can only imagine being dressed up like someone who escaped from a renfaire and seeing that, and then have those dudes come running at me.

What I'm saying is the reason the defending extras all looked terrified is that the extras were terrified.

--
-Pasha
"Don't change the subject"
"Too slow, already did."

I just noticed this while looking in the full-view of the thread for something else, and it occurred to me that:

>a bunch of the Orcs (Which were just Maori in Orc drag)

They must have had to pay those guys extra to dress up as beings so markedly less badass than their actual selves. Acting!

--G.
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>One rather suspects that Romulan is the kind of language where "from
>Hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at
>thee" is one word. And not even a particularly long one.

Unsurprising. I don't know when the Romulan/Vulcan split occurred in UF (or, indeed, if there was one, and the Romulans and Vulcans are not just parallel-evolution equivalents in the same way that there are Earth-independent human strains) but it probably was no further back than, say, the dark age that the near-simultaneous collapses of the Atlantean and Santovasku Empires heralded.

That means that the Romulan tongue hasn't had that long to diverge from its Vulcan roots, and at least some Vulcan languages are, one suspects, incredibly dense in their information payload. "Katra," for example, likely conveys a hell of a lot more information and meaning if translated completely literally than just "living spirit."

"Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations" is also probably a lot denser in the original Vulcan as well, one imagines.

-Merc
Keep Rat

>That means that the Romulan tongue hasn't had that long to diverge
>from its Vulcan roots,

Not sure how UF-canon-worthy it might be, but I'm sure I remember something in Diane Duane's novels. The colonists that would later be called Romulan deliberately chose to "artificially drift" their language, going back to an ancient form and evolving it in a different direction. For an Earth example, look at the differences — and a surprising number of similarities — in all the European languages that evolved from the Indo-European root that hasn't been spoken for several thousand years.

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

>The colonists that would later be
>called Romulan deliberately chose to "artificially drift" their
>language, going back to an ancient form and evolving it in a different
>direction. For an Earth example, look at the differences — and a
>surprising number of similarities — in all the European languages
>that evolved from the Indo-European root that hasn't been spoken for
>several thousand years.

... or the State of Israel adopting Hebrew as its national language when it had been dead outside academic and rabbinical circles for 1700 years.

--G.
one wonders vaguely what the Vulcan-Romulan equivalent of the as-salamu 'alaykum-shalom aleichem split is
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>one wonders vaguely what the Vulcan-Romulan equivalent of the
as-salamu 'alaykum-shalom aleichem split is

thiich tohr u' tehsmaer (Romulan)

tixoi tor kh'ta tesmur (Vulcan)

Live long and prosper (Federation Standard)

Office of the Chief
All-Points Notice Addendum
February 11, 2410

All,

There's also been some confusion, mainly in divisions not previously accustomed to dealing with Klingon matters, as to the various prefixes used with Klingon surnames and what they represent. Since we're all thinking about these things anyway after yesterday's memo, here's a quick primer.

Some Klingon families do not use what is technically referred to as a line name; instead, members of these lines describe themselves as "$NAME, son/daughter of $PARENT", customarily choosing whichever parent is more prominent, or more likely to achieve a desired effect (intimidation, appreciation, whatever the conversational context may call for - there are whole books on the intricacies of Klingon conversational dynamics). This abandonment of the old line name system is usually explained in terms of that system being archaic, confining, or otherwise unjustifiably bias-inducing. Note that the practice has been outlawed in the territory controlled by House Klavaar as of last November, on the grounds that it is "corrosive to traditional Klingon values."

Anyway, the matter is complicated further on particularly formal occasions, or others where greater details is appropriate or desirable, by the identification of the Great House to which one's family line owes allegiance. This goes at the end of the introductory chain, so, for example, a Klingon soldier might identify himself as Sergeant Krav, son of Maga, of the Great House Korgoth. This doesn't mean Sgt. Krav is actually related to Chancellor Krojaar (who is the head of House Korgoth - more on that in a moment), but that his family line are historically clients or retainers of Korgoth. (Compare the way the Scottish clans and family lines interconnect, such that, e.g., the Ponds of Inverness are members of Clan MacIntosh, but not closely related to the actual MacIntosh family.)

Some of the bemusement this memo is meant to address comes from the fact that our Klingon allies often apply these same naming conventions to non-Klingons, especially those they've seen combat alongside. This is usually meant to convey respect and admiration, but it can be a little confusing, especially since they often involve assumptions as to lineage that don't map exactly to the way non-Klingon family dynamics work. For instance, one will sometimes see Captain Utena Tenjou described in Klingon documents as QubwI'Sa' utena vestai-tenjoH' gin'tak Ha'chInS: Thought Admiral (literally "general officer who thinks") Utena, noble head of the Tenjou line, master-at-arms of Great House Hutchins. (Some authorities translate the title gin'tak, "master-at-arms", as something more akin to the consigliere of 20th-century Earth's Italian organized crime syndicates.)

The line name prefixes people have been asking about are part of a naming system that goes back a long way in Klingon history, dating to well before the spaceflight era. One can get an impression for how far back by comparing the systems in use on Qo'noS and the oldest Klingon colony world, Klinzhai Prime (now capital of the Klingon Union); there are still rough parallels between the two, but they have drifted far apart in implementation and often in fine degrees of nuance not evident to the outside observer (nor even, in many cases, inside observers). One important distinction is that Qo'noS speakers often use the prefixed line name with prepended definite article to refer to others ("the vestai-tenjoH'", for instance), whereas Klinzhai speakers never do that; e.g., it is incorrect to refer to Captain Krontep vathKesek as "the vathKesek".

There are far too many such prefixes for an exhaustive explanation here - the Reference Department has all the resources you could ever want if you really want to dig into the matter. In practice, however, Klingons customarily use a stripped-down form when dealing with foreigners and keep the more complex and subtle shades of distinction for conversation among themselves. The forms most likely to be encountered outside Klingon space are summarized in the table below.

Qo'noS prefix	Klinzhai Prime prefix	Rough translation	Notes
epetai-	ept	head of Great House	Implies high nobility; compare Earth title duke.
vestai-	vath	head of non-Great House line	Implies middle nobility; compare count.
sutai-	no common usage	honored member of	Implies minor nobility; very roughly akin to knighthood. Often used by speakers unfamiliar with the addressee's line or standing therein, but wishing to show respect or esteem.
emtai-	kal	spouse of member of	Archaic in Qo'noS usage; most individuals marrying into Klingon lines today are given the same prefix as their spouses. Klinzhai version still in common use.
tai-	ves	member of	Conveys no particular distinction. Klinzhai usage is the standard assumption if the addressee is unknown to the speaker and conveys no offense if it is incorrect. In Qo'noS usage, can be insulting if used of someone of higher standing by someone who is known to be aware of that, but usually neutral.

Note that the head of a Great House will always take that House's name as his or her line name, even if he or she was born to a different line. Chancellor Krojaar epetai-Korgoth, for example, was born a member of the cha'Hej line (which was part of House Korgoth) and ultimately succeeded the last of the "original" Korgoths, who was childless. Until that event he was Krojaar vestai-cha'Hej.

In marriage situations, the names of the participants are generally decided upon as part of the wedding preparations, and do not follow any assumed gender conventions. Members of roughly equivalent lines who are of comparable standing within those lines may simply keep their original names. In other cases, the member of the lesser line, or the person of lesser standing within roughly equivalent lines, will take the name of the greater. In still others, the persons getting married will establish themselves as the founders of an entirely new line, both changing their names accordingly. Some, for reasons noted above, go so far as to abandon both line names.

I hope this clears up any confusion that might be lingering. As I said before, this system is actually much more complex than my quick summary here might imply - it is occasionally the subject of entire graduate theses in Klingon Studies programs around the galaxy - but this should suffice for most conversational needs in the course of everyday business. Those requiring a deeper understanding for e.g. diplomatic purposes will be provided with one in the course of their occupational training anyway.

My thanks as always to Mike Ford, head of the Klingon desk in Exocultural Research; his own doctoral thesis on the dynamics of the Great Houses contains a summary in its abstract that was the jumping-off point for this whole exercise.

- Lu

[As implied above, the naming convention observed in John M. Ford's The Final Reflection was the basis for many of the Klingon names which have appeared in the Symphony of the Sword stories over the years. There's no actual explanation or glossary for them in the book, so the bits you see here that are drawn from TFR were glarked from context, and the rest - the suffixes not appearing in the book and the Klinzhai Prime variants entirely - are my own extrapolations. --G.]

I think some of the prefix stuff was explained in the FASA rulebooks he also did, but I haven't even seen one in decades.

>master-at-arms of Great House Hutchins. (Some authorities translate
>the title gin'tak, "master-at-arms", as something more akin to
>the consigliere of 20th-century Earth's Italian organized crime
>syndicates.)

I can't help thinking that when Anthy came across this in a footnote in a Klingon language textbook, she found it hilarious, and Utena gave her The Look...

--
Unable to save the day: File is read-only.

And given the approximation as "count" for "vestai" I suddenly have this picture of Utena in Dracula drag for some zany heist-related reason.

>And given the approximation as "count" for "vestai" I suddenly have
>this picture of Utena in Dracula drag for some zany heist-related
>reason.

Or possibly just because it's Halloween, and she knew if she wore the Bela Lugosi rig, Anthy would go as one of the Brides of Dracula.

--G.
Leaving Corwin no option but to play the role of Jonathan Harker. They told him not to go roaming around the castle at night, but he didn't listen.
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"Do I have to?"

"Of course you don't, but Anthy will be very, very disappointed in you if you don't."

"Which is a yes."

"Yup."

"Man..."

"Don't you dare. Don't you even think about-"

"This bites."

"Anthy! Can we bludgeon him with something yet?"

"After the party, dear, or you'll mess up your suit."

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

>>And given the approximation as "count" for "vestai" I suddenly have
>>this picture of Utena in Dracula drag for some zany heist-related
>>reason.
>
>Or possibly just because it's Halloween, and she knew if she wore the
>Bela Lugosi rig, Anthy would go as one of the Brides of Dracula.
>
>--G.
>Leaving Corwin no option but to play the role of Jonathan
>Harker. They told him not to go roaming around the castle at
>night, but he didn't listen.

...if I had the cash, I would surely commission that. That is an image that my brain likes a lot.

LAST EDITED ON Mar-11-14 AT 03:25 PM (EDT)
 
>>>And given the approximation as "count" for "vestai" I suddenly have
>>>this picture of Utena in Dracula drag for some zany heist-related
>>>reason.
>>
>>Or possibly just because it's Halloween, and she knew if she wore the
>>Bela Lugosi rig, Anthy would go as one of the Brides of Dracula.
>>
>>--G.
>>Leaving Corwin no option but to play the role of Jonathan
>>Harker. They told him not to go roaming around the castle at
>>night, but he didn't listen.
>
>...if I had the cash, I would surely commission that. That is an image
>that my brain likes a lot.

Hmm. I hadn't considered that, but you may be onto something there. Corwin in Victorian gentleman clothes, looking dismayed; Utena as Dracula on one side of him, Anthy as one of the feral vampire ladies on the other, both (if you will pardon the expression) vamping him. That has potential. Costly with three characters, but it has potential. Doc was just reminding me the other day that we're coming up on con season, when he emerges from hibernation and starts hitting artists' alleys all across the Midwest. :)

--G.
152,000 Vampyros Lesbos jokes redacted
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That would be awesome. While I probably couldn't afford the whole commission, I'd be happy to chip in a few bucks to make it reality.