First Contact in Asia?

[QoghtlhIH'u']

I always thought the Vulcans where the first to meet with the Terrans in the Star Trek universe. But looking at the Klingon words:
lung dragonlike lizard
QIS  wavy blade knife
 a Chinese and and Indonesian word (Kris or keris) respectively, one would suspect that the Klingons visited Earth at least a few centures ago. In that case I guess the Klingons copied the Chinese word in their own language and the Indonesians (or whichever regional people because Indonesia did not exist more than 60 years ago) took the word QIS and the weapon from the Klingons, unless there is archaeological evidence that the wavy bladed Keris is a very ancient weapon in South Asia.
Maybe there is even more linguistic evidence. If anyone knows more about this, please share it with me.

QoghtlhIH'u'

[tesseraktik]

Well, when I started learning tlhIngan Hol one of the things that struck med was "Hey, this is sort of like Mandarin".  Indeed, if I didn't know how to express something in tlhIngan Hol, I found that I could sometimes get it right by checking how to say it in Mandarin and then using that knowledge to fill in the gaps.

Anyhow, Marc Okrand included a lot of puns in tlhIngan Hol, and these ones were - with little doubt - deliberate.  Another one from Chinese is perhaps qung (a hole in an instrument), from the Mandarin 孔 (kǒng), and chan which means place to the East (lots of people named Chan over in the East).
However, I'm sure any Klingon would tell you that if anybody has been influenced by the other, then it is the Federation that has stolen these Klingon cultural treasures and manufactured evidence that they are in fact Terran (it's like Shex'pir, all over again).  Another possibility is that Qo'noS and the Orient were both influenced by the Hur'Iq (slang for foreigner, originally an alien people that invaded the Klingon Homeworld long ago (or possibly at some point in the next century, as we are still in the 21st century)).

Voyager Season 2 spoiler alert:  Speaking of alien influence on languages, tlhIngan Hol is quite similar to various ancient American languages, such as Mutsun and Nahuatl...  ...and we do in fact know from VOY: "Tattoo" that the Americas were visited about 45,000 years back by aliens who had a great impact on the peoples of those continents.
Mere coincidence?  Well, yeah, probably, but stranger things have happened on Star Trek.

[QoghtlhIH'u']

Hi there,


Well, if we accept that mr. Okrand is just explaining to us what Maltz revealed to him then there is no such thing as a pun. As it is, many people posting on these pages live in two realities: if we assume we are in the reality outlined to us by Roddenberry and Okrand (and perhaps dozens of script writers) my guess is the Klingons visited Asia hundreds of years ago and there was a small exchange of words and concepts.

I am not sure if the word Heng is already on a pun-list, but just this summer I saw a guy in Amsterdam playing a musical instrument he called "hang", (English pronunciation). It sort of looks like a flying saucer actually, with a diameter of about 50 centimeters. The "hang" has no strings, keys, buttons or something like that. It really is like an empty flying saucer with a big hole at the bottom (or top). The music it can produce is amazing. Back to the word Heng: it means playing a musical instruments with your hands. 

There is another word that could be regarded as a pun and it can be recognized as such only if you know German and human history of the 20th century. Only it is not such a nice pun, in fact it's very nasty. I'll give the reader a hint: Fiddler on the Roof.

As for Chinese resembling Klingon: apart from the consonants in the name QoghtlhIH'u' many Klingon words could be Chinese because of the one-syllable character. But with the pre- and suffixes the similarity fails.

QoghtlhIH'u'

[tesseraktik]

Well, seeing as the puns in tlhIngan Hol come from numerous Human cultures spread out in time - including some very recent ones - I would be somewhat surprised if that were the case...  ...although more than that, I'd say the best proof that they haven't been here is that there's no record of them conquering us

There is another word that could be regarded as a pun and it can be recognized as such only if you know German and human history of the 20th century. Only it is not such a nice pun, in fact it's very nasty. I'll give the reader a hint: Fiddler on the Roof.

Not sure what you're referring to, although a quick look did find me two rather obvious puns relating to Nazis; wouldn't be surprised if there are more.

[QoghtlhIH'u']

Hi Fraek,

I was referring to:
yuD to be dishonest
German: Jude - English jew. The Klingon pronunciation is the same as the German.
Relatively many jews were in all kinds of businesses all over Europe (pretty much as the Chinese in Indonesia, they got massacred just as well at some point in time) and they were effectivily being accused of being dishonest. This is one of the things that led to the Holocaust. I know I am simplifying matters, but dishonesty and jews are still related matters in popular West European culture.
I wonder what words you are referring to.

Ofcourse, languages can have similar words that coincidentally have these effects, but this one is very gross in my opinion. If I were a Jew of German descent and a Klingon fan I would feel very uncomfortable to express the notion of dishonesty if I would want to speak or write in tlhIngan Hol.

QoghtlhIH'u'

[tesseraktik]

Ah, didn't notice that one (tried to see analyze similar phrases such as yu' Den, but none of the ones I checked made any sense).  However, though it may be picking at straws, I don't really find the pronunciation of yuD and Jude all that similar; the D is not very similar to the d, and the words flow rather differently (I'm fairly sure that the Ju- in Jude is treated as one syllable, with the u somewhat elongated, whereas yuD is the whole syllable in Klingon and very hard to break up or to make flow into other syllables as tlhIngan Hol is meant to sound very choppy.
Now, I think it's an interesting observation, but I do not believe that a German-speaker would find the two words all that similar; I believe that the German Jude is similar to the Swedish jude (which also means "Jew"), and when I say yuD to myself, it neither sounds or feels to me at all like it could be the beginning of the word jude.

The ones I was thinking of:
HI' tlher : lumpy dictator (after Hitler)
ghe'tor or ghe''or : the Klingon equivalent of Abaddon* (less certain about this one, but I wonder if it could be from the word ghetto; these institutions have been Abaddon for a lot of people, most memorably under the Nazis)

*The curse-filter replaces writes 'Abaddon' wherever one writes the name of the place where bad people go when they die to burn in eternal Abaddonfire.

[QoghtlhIH'u']

Hi Fraek,

I do not know either Abaddon or the curse filter. But I guess ghe'thor is actually fashioned after ghetto, and surely HI' is inspired by the most infamous dictator of them all.
Of course Jude is two syllable and yuD is a more stocky one syllable word (pronounced as you say in a "choppy" way), with the D pronounced somewhat differently from the English, German (and many other languages) d. As far as I know both types of d exist in Hindi: one d pronounced with the tongue starting just behind the teeth and the other one where the tip of the tongue starts up the roof of the mouth and somewhat to the back of it, the way I understood the Klingon D is to be pronounced. Yet for me the similarity between yuD and Jude is obvious.
Mind you, the H in HI' is different from the h in English and German. As you know the H sound is not known (not that hard and raspy) in (standard) German  (it is common in my own native Dutch but written 'g', at least for most of the country and in the standard pronunciation). 

But puns work only when they are recognized as such. And if the resemblance is not obvious at first sight the pun-effect is gone.

I was wrong about the word Heng and the musical instrument "Hang".  The Swiss made "Hang" was first produced in the year 2000 and the word Heng was described earlier and means pushing buttons on a musical instrument. The Hang does not have buttons. This is an example of coincidence of similarity between languages.


Maybe the Klingons did not really conquer Earth a few centuries ago because the Terrans then did not stand a chance and it would not have been any fun to the fierce Klingons with there superior weaponry. They probably killed of all the dinosaurs for dinner first before leaving. Or am I know confusing the past of humanity with the far distant past of the Earth ? 

QoghtlhIH'u'