Did Marc Okrand hate van Gogh?

[OmnificienT]

Hello,

I just realized the following: the tlhIngan Hol verb "HoH", which means to kill, sounds exactly like the Dutch artist's name "van Gogh".

 I suppose this is just a funny coincidence, but it is a bit odd.

peyoH

[QoghtlhIH'u']

Hi OmnificienT

As you can see elsewhere in this forum, there are quite some puns in the Klingon language, and being Dutch myself, I also wondered about HoH and Van Gogh, but the Klingon word has to sound like something in some language.

After all, given the basic sounds of Klingon and the fact that most words are basically constructed with a consonant, a vowel and a consonant, CVC, words like HoH and HoD (Captain, the "God" of a spaceship?) will inevitably have a meaning in both Klingon and some language anywhere in the world. Now, if HoH meant ear or painter there would probably be a pun here, but to kill is too different from an artist who cuts his ear off.
In Surinamese, some people say "dong" if they mean sleep which is Dong in Klingon. I seriously doubt that Okrand knows Surinamese.



QoghtlhIH'u'

[tesseraktik]

In Surinamese, some people say "dong" if they mean sleep which is Dong in Klingon. I seriously doubt that Okrand knows Surinamese.

Actually, considering Marc Okrand is somewhat of an expert on Native American languages and that Klingon is in part inspired by Nahuatl and Mutsun, I think this might have been intentional.  However, I very much agree with your general conclusion; while it's not impossible that he happened to think of van Gogh as he was trying to think of a word for to kill, there is too little to go by for us to draw any conclusions from it.

[ter'eS]

In Surinamese, some people say "dong" if they mean sleep which is Dong in Klingon. I seriously doubt that Okrand knows Surinamese.

Actually, 'sleep' is Qong.

[QoghtlhIH'u']

Actually, 'sleep' is Qong.

My mistake, ouch! I act too much on impulse.... 

By the way Fraek, although Suriname is a South American country, Surinamese is not at all a native american-indian language: it is what the West African slaves more or less created from English, Dutch, Portuguese and perhaps some West African languages to communicate with eachother.  I guess Mutsun and Nahuatl are/were North American languages anyway.

A relative of the famous painter: Theo van Gogh, got killed a few years ago by an extremist, in that sense Gogh and HoH are related.



[Edit -- Fixed BBCode -=- Kesvirit]

[tesseraktik]

By the way Fraek, although Suriname is a South American country, Surinamese is not at all a native american-indian language: it is what the West African slaves more or less created from English, Dutch, Portuguese and perhaps some West African languages to communicate with eachother.  I guess Mutsun and Nahuatl are/were North American languages anyway.

Ah, I see.  I figured that with it being spoken in the Americas Marc Okrand may have come in contact with it, although if it's African-European in origin then I guess it's a bit outside his field.

A relative of the famous painter: Theo van Gogh, got killed a few years ago by an extremist, in that sense Gogh and HoH are related.

Hmm, a bit far-fetched, perhaps...  ...and it occurred over twenty years after the word HoH was used in Star Trek III:  The Search for Spock, so I don't think Marc Okrand was much influenced by that

[QoghtlhIH'u']

Hmm, a bit far-fetched, perhaps...  ...and it occurred over twenty years after the word HoH was used in Star Trek III:  The Search for Spock, so I don't think Marc Okrand was much influenced by that 

Ofcourse it is far fetched, very very far fetched indeed. But it goes to show that analogies/similarities/coincidents can be found almost anywhere 

 [Edit- Fixed quote tags- Klythe]

[Qunchuy]

Now, if HoH meant ear or painter there would probably be a pun here, but to kill is too different from an artist who cuts his ear off.

qogh means ear (external, cartilaginous part). It sounds more like Gogh than HoH does. Marc Okrand told the qep'a' attendees in Brussels that he considered defining *van as inner ear (sound-sensing part), but decided against it (it is in the dictionary as teS).

[QoghtlhIH'u']

Qunchuy,
I do not know if you speak Dutch, but to Dutch people the Klingon HoH is almost exactly like Gogh in Van Gogh than the Klingon qogh.
Then again, if you compare the English pronunciation of the name of the Dutch painter to either qogh or HoH you are right.

QoghtlhIH'u'

[Qunchuy]

I do not know if you speak Dutch, but to Dutch people the Klingon HoH is almost exactly like Gogh in Van Gogh than the Klingon qogh.

During the qep'a' in Brussels, we discovered the existence of a German/Dutch "accent" among Klingon speakers. For some reason, the unvoiced H comes out much softer than the voiced gh sound. To a native English-speaking Klingonist, the two sounds seem nearly reversed from one another. With Marc Okrand himself present for comparison, we concluded that this accent was "wrong" but understandable. Just like many accents in many languages.

So while your pronunciation of HoH might be closer to "Gogh" than your pronunciation of qogh, when Marc Okrand says them, qogh is definitely a better match.

[QoghtlhIH'u']

I've heard Okrand say yIHoH in the little movie where he explains the making of Klingon and the HoH part sounds exactly like Gogh the way Dutch people pronounce it, with the exception of those living in the south of the Netherlands, but their pronunciation of 'g'  is not considered standard Dutch. Flemish (Belgian Dutch) is more like Southern Dutch at least as far as the soft g is concerned, although there are a few thousand dialects.  And most Germans have a hard time with the Dutch g which was a way to test people whether they where German during the Second World War. If anyone was suspected to be a spy of the occupying force, they where asked to say "Scheveningen". "ch" is pronounced as g in Dutch. The gh part of the painters name is not proper Dutch but is pronounced as if it were a g: Van Gog.
Brussels itself is originally Flemish but is considered to be part of the French speaking part.

So there is Standard Dutch, Southern Dutch, Flemish and German.