Made-Up Words

[backstept]

one thing that really bugs me about DS9 that I haven't really noticed in the other trek shows is made-up words
I'm not talkin' about names which are all made-up words, I'm talkin' about religious litanies, and ritual phrases . . . total nonsense words that don't even sound like an alien language just english nonsense
like any and all Bajoran incantation, or Trill symbiont ceremony 'magic words'
I would have made much more sense for the writers to create wonderful poems or verses that enliven the story instead of having the actors spout word salad.
I mean . . . they created a whole Klingon language, but any other culture gets a bunch of nonsensical syllables strung together.

anyway . . . that's my strong opinion on a trivial matter from a television show that ended over a decade ago :P

 

[SchwEnt]

Which words are pissing you off?

Seems to me many alien cultures got a bunch of made up words... pon far, stovokor, katra, paghwraiths, plak tow, tal shiar, bat'leth, jolan tru, fal-tor-pan, others.

How do you see Vulcan or Klingon or Romulan or Bajoran or Cardassian any worse than the others?

Are you saying you'd prefer hearing stuff in standard English rather than having them attempt "native" Bajoran or Trill or Cardassian language, which sounds like mumbo-jumbo?

 

[backstept]

it's not the nouns that bother me, it's the ritual chants that grind my gears
like when Ezri was doing her rite of emergence chant thing to bring up Joran
it just sounded like a bunch of random syllables

 

[Sindatur]

it's not the nouns that bother me, it's the ritual chants that grind my gears
like when Ezri was doing her rite of emergence chant thing to bring up Joran
it just sounded like a bunch of random syllables

That's all any language is, until you know it well enough to understand the mechanics of it.

I am familiar with French and Spanish, and English is my first language, so, those languages all seem like "real languages" to me, and the words obviously mean something. Asian languages, on the other hand, just sound like a bunch of random syllables to me

 

[Eric Cheung]

Even Klingon started out as gibberish until Star Trek III. The words from TMP needed to be interpreted by a linguist and fashioned into a language in retrospect. The same could probably be done with Trill, Bajoran, and Ferengi.

 

[RoJoHen]

it's not the nouns that bother me, it's the ritual chants that grind my gears
like when Ezri was doing her rite of emergence chant thing to bring up Joran
it just sounded like a bunch of random syllables

And I'm sure English would just sound like a bunch of random syllables to someone who has never heard it before too.

 

[MacLeod]

Arn't new words created all the time even in the English language

 

[RoJoHen]

I mean, I can understand the criticism that, because we hear these characters speaking English all the time, there's no reason that, aside from nouns that have no direct translation, we should suddenly stop hearing English just because. I mean, the example of Ezri summoning Joran is perfect for this. Why should we be hearing the ritual in the Trill language when everything else she says is in English?

 

[tafkats]

It could be that the universal translator specifically ignores words that have no direct counterpart outside of their originating culture.

Besides, it'd be pretty lame if Kira went around saying "Happy Space Thanksgiving" instead of "Peldor Joi," if people ordered "Bajoran Souffle" and "Klingon Coffee" from the replimat, and Martok talked about going to "Klingon Heaven."

 

[MacLeod]

Some languages borrow words from others and those words become intergrated into that language and need no translation as even though say it was once a Klingon word it has become a word in the English langauge as well

 

[RoJoHen]

It could be that the universal translator specifically ignores words that have no direct counterpart outside of their originating culture.

Besides, it'd be pretty lame if Kira went around saying "Happy Space Thanksgiving" instead of "Peldor Joi," if people ordered "Bajoran Souffle" and "Klingon Coffee" from the replimat, and Martok talked about going to "Klingon Heaven."

The OP has already said he's not talking about the nouns. Obviously things in other cultures are going to have their own names.