ghotI' for fish existed before Klingon

[kroki]

Hi there,

Going through the page of New Canonical Klingon Words I found
ghotI'    (n) fish, most general word for fish-like creature [HolQeD v10n4p5] (Added: 15 January 2002)

Suddenly I remembered reading in a book that the English word for fish could be spelled like: ghoti
gh from tough
o from women
ti from station

This was to demonstrate how English words are far from phonetically spelled. I read the book in 197x and the author was referring to yet someone else who came up with ghoti for fish.
Maybe I am telling you nothing new.
Signing off,
Kroki

[ter'eS]

The first person I'm aware of who mentioned this was George Bernard Shaw as part of his campaign to reform English spelling.  Okrand's use of it is an example of his many, sometimes horrible, puns that he's slipped into the Klingon vocabulary. I'm sure he knew exactly who he was quoting.

[SoplaHtaHwI']

Not sure whether this can be considered a horrible pun though. I think it's pretty cool of MO to include it.

I'm currently reading a book about the English language, and there would be much work.. But as it has been tried several times, the Anglophones seem not to like forced change too much.... 8-)

[Qunchuy]

Maybe I am telling you nothing new.

Perhaps some reading this were unaware of the joke. I'm sure that almost every Klingon-speaking language hobbyist recognized it immediately.

Check out the Puns in the Vocabulary of tlhIngan Hol page on the KLI Wiki for a list of linguistic in-jokes, both assumed and confirmed.

[Klythe]

Not sure whether this can be considered a horrible pun though. I think it's pretty cool of MO to include it.

I'm currently reading a book about the English language, and there would be much work.. But as it has been tried several times, the Anglophones seem not to like forced change too much.... 8-)

     What book about the English language may I ask?  What about the enlish language is it talking about...  Mostly grammar or history or is it more interesting factoids or...  I dunno what else...  What are you finding interesting in that book?

     Aome of the problema with trying to force a change in natural languages is not only that you have to track down most everyone who uses that language to clue them into the new rules.but you also have to convince them of the new rules and why they should change, then you have to reenforce the changee with social enforcement, so speakers correct each other...  Without those things it's virtually impossible to change a language used you how many Billion people...

[kroki]

Hello Klythe,

I really don't know which book it was, it is about 30 years ago that I read it anyway.
I also think it is pretty cool that Okrand included ghoti into tlhIngan Hol.

I know there where some attempts at reforming English. Personally I could not be bothered less with the irregularity of English spelling, it is written, read, spoken and sung anyway, the world over. No matter how bad it may sound from German or Japanese, or yes even Dutch mouths.  The Esperantists may have a point in that perhaps their language is easier to learn because it is more regular and much more phonetic, but people will learn English through popular music, movies, television and the Internet anyway.

Back to tlhIngan Hol and bad puns:
It would only be annoying if really many words would resemble known words or names, such as for instance:

qaryoq  bird capable of mimicking speech
qaryoq'a'   bird capable of mimicking speech, larger than qaryoq

José Carioca is a Disney cartoon character drawn as an anthropomorphized parrot

The really funny part is that to define qaryoq'a' , first qaryoq had to be invented!

Other words, like chuy or bur merely sound like what they mean. That makes sense to me.


I will check on the list later, but these two, ghotI' and qaryoq'a' I found out by myself.

Kroki

[kroki]

The puns list at kli.org explains it thus:
qaryoq'a'
(n) type of bird (capable of mimicking speech) ["Karaoke"]
 
Disney's Carioca is a better explanation.

Many of the explanations on the kli.org Pun page are quite farfetched or rather, the connection between the tlhIngan word and its supposed origin is not recognizable to most people anyway.
For instance:
yor (n) top ["You're the Top", a song by Cole Porter]

This way you can connect anything to anything.

The naming of toes is funny though.

[SoplaHtaHwI']

     What book about the English language may I ask?  What about the enlish language is it talking about...  Mostly grammar or history or is it more interesting factoids or...  I dunno what else...  What are you finding interesting in that book?

It is the book "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson.
It is both history and factoid... I have read "A little history about nearly everything" from the author, and was affirmed in my world view by it.
This book is not so much world view-affirming as it is informative and/or amusing. It talks about both languages in general (for comparison's sake) and both American and British English. How English wasn't really a language to write home about/be proud of until the English went across the ocean, for instance...

Changing a living language which was uncontrolled/ignored for most of its early life, as the English language was is simply too big a task for one institution. Both French and Dutch have such an institution, and besides natural change, the formal rules are set by these institutions.
As English does not have (not for a lack of trying) such a body, it has been a natural growth process from the onset (according to the book, that is. I do not claim to be an expert. Simply a linguaphile).

One of the more interesting bits of the book deal with spoken English, and how ye Olde English (middle-English?) must have sounded pretty much like American English (or an average of it, at least) sounds today.

I'll have to find a similar book about Dutch, I think 8-)

[kroki]

Hi SoplaHtaHwI'  and others,

Actually I checked my off line library yesterday, that is: my bookshelf, and I have two different books about language both mentioning George Bernard Shaw's ghoti remark.

The thing is that Shaw's frustration about English spelling is very famous and is used by anyone who writes about languages in general. Since any book about the subject "language" will cover English in detail because it became a world dominating language since the 19th century, Shaw is cited in most or all of these books.  What I am saying is that not only "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson is quoting G.B. Shaw.

Back to tlhIngan Hol and ghotI': although it is quite logical that in the process of inventing new words for an artificial language many funny ideas must pop up in the head of the one who is privileged to make up the words, in this case Marc Okrand. The thing with ghotI' is that, apart from its origin (Shaw), it is a two syllable word for a basic concept: "living creature that lives under water".  The 2205 possible combinations of consonant vowel consonant are not enough for a rich language to cover all concepts, but personally I would prefer the more basic concepts to be expressed in the most basic possibility.

The qaryog'a' example is different: a bird mimicking speech is much less of a fundamental concept than a fish.

About the pun list:
The tlIngan word yor could be a pun to almost anything:
yor everything
yor my word
yor the top
yor beautiful

likewise with

Har to believe (this one is not even mentioned in the list)
Har to find
Har dee har har (to laugh)
Har ache (heartache)

nIH to steal (nick) (also not mentioned)
quS chair (with cushions, not mentioned)

What I am trying to prove is that the list at kli.org is too long and too short at the same time.

Anyway, today is my 50th birthday and I got TKD as one of my presents!

Signing off,
Kroki

[Jon]

Anyway, today is my 50th birthday and I got TKD as one of my presents!

qoSlIj DatIvjaj!

[Klythe]

    Ahem...   Jon... You ought to know the rules about untranslated Klingon text by now.   Not everyone has a copy of the Klingon Dictionary, nor should they all have to go grab it in order to read these forums.  You must provide translation(or at least enough context so we all know what you mean) of all tlhIngan Hol posted publically on the forums.

[kroki]

Well Klythe,

It is pretty obvious that
qoSlIj DatIvjaj!
means Happy Birthday!
It is mentioned in the EveryDay Phrases page at kli.org, together with an audio file. After some searching I found that it literally means:

your birthday enjoy the day (more literally: your birthday, you enjoy it day)

Remarkable that birthday translates into the single syllable word qoS

qatlho', Jon
thank you, Jon

[Qunchuy]

It is pretty obvious that
qoSlIj DatIvjaj!
means Happy Birthday!
It is mentioned in the EveryDay Phrases page at kli.org, together with an audio file. After some searching I found that it literally means:

your birthday enjoy the day (more literally: your birthday, you enjoy it day)

Where did you find that "literal" translation? It's wrong. The suffix -jaj is not the same as the noun jaj day.

qoS birthday
-lIj your
Da- you (do something to) it
tIv enjoy
-jaj may (wish)

It's literally may you enjoy your birthday.


Many words in Klingon are two syllables long. I don't think there needs to be any correlation between shortness and "basic conceptness".

On the topic of puns, I really don't understand what you're getting at with the lists of phrases for yor and Har.

[kroki]

Thanks Qunchuy, I was puzzled by the jaj part anyway.

The point I was trying to make with the yor and Har examples was that I personally find that the so called puns in the list at kli.org is a bit arbitrary because it is possible to connect many words with  many other words, so that it might just be a coincidence anyway.
Har means to believe according to the Postal Course.
Well, that certainly looks like a pun to me, if you want it to be one.
And yor the top  is explained in the list as You're the top, a song by Cole Porter.
But if yor had a different meaning it would not be too difficult to connect it to that other meaning. But then again, I might have gotten carried away by my criticisms of this list. First of all the explanation of
qaryoq'a'  bird mimicking speech ["Karaoke"]
just is not the right explanation. Karaoke is about people singing, not about a bird mimicking speech, while Joe Carioca is actually a parrot, which is a bird mimicking speech.
And when I started "shooting" at the pun-list anyway I got carried away.

[Klythe]

    Well there is another reason why we ask for translation, since back translating is not trivial and people do make mistakes.  Klingon is a language where one misspoken word can turn a pleasantry or a simple observation into a deathly insult, so we always require translations outside of the section for discussions in tlhIngan Hol only.

    Do not assume what is obvious, or you may find yourself a victim of treachery.  It is good that you verified form another source, but we prefer to place the burden of being understood on one who is speaking rather than the many who are listening.

   
   Anyway... This is off topic and needs to end.  Discussion about the validity of the rules and guidelines belongs in a new thread in Forum feedback.

[bekk Kretorg Leskit]

I dare say that there are many english language words that could be spelt different, it has always been a bit of mess. Qapla'

[Edit- Deleted unnecessary quote   -Klythe]

[qoSagh]

I found one on the list that has apparently two puns.

'IrneH
(n) uncle, mother's brother ["Uncle Henry" from The Wizard of Oz, spelled backward. cf. me']

I had always heard that this was meant to sound like Ernie, for Uncle Ernie from the Rock Opera Tommy by the Who. I had never heard of the Wizard of Oz connection until reading this thread.