does anyone know if there are (canon or fan-made) cardassian swears?
As per self and feltelures's ongoing totes made-up but very fun Kardasi vocab:
Let’s swear in Cardassian!
Cardassian
Pronunciation
Rough English equivalent
atsi’sepgehtef: to consort with an inferior
e’Gir: defective
huss’vest: to desiccate – a pretty mild curse
kratnij: boundary violation
pled: to shit
s’hUnj: to twist – a pretty mild curse
sark: alien
slet: to fuck
tiz: to piss
us’cut: chaotic, unstructured, a mess
usU: messy (mild curse); oh, it’s all messy = oh, it’s all fucked up, but the sense is mild exasperation; you look a bit messy = you look a bit disarranged, and implications can vary from “you aren’t taking very good care of yourself” to “ooh, did you just get laid?”
vrerUj: unclean, filthy
I believe “sark” is actually sourced from galileoace’s Kardasi, our template.
(also someone mentioned “khest,” but I thought that was Klingon a la John M. Ford? Is it Kardasi too?)
@catully wondered how to conjugate. Good question!
(Trying to @ feltelures but it’s not working…?)
Like so, more or less:
subject-noun object-noun adjective verb’tense. (Although it can vary. And obviously you don’t have to have all of these parts in every sentence.)
So if you wanted to tell Gul Dukat that he’s consorting with social inferiors—which, like, true, although you might want to be careful about actually calling him on it—you’d say:
dUkat atsi’sepgehtef’I! (Dukat consorting-with-inferiors’in present!)
Or, like, in-past (‘a) or in-future (‘U).
You can also just cuss. Like, you might hiss “vrerUj” under your breath when the sewing machine skips stitches.
Play around; it’s all just conlang anyway. More details available if requested.
I also have been working out out what “Fuck you” would possibly be. Perhaps not the most Cardassian of things to say, but you never know. (tinsnip, what say you?)
ka slet’U! (you fuck’imperative [which overlaps with the future tense]; pronounced “kah slayt’oo” with a glottal stop [the hyphen in “uh-oh”] as the apostrophe)
There’s also “Fuck me,” which would be “nu slet’U” (“nuh slayt’oo”)
Pretty sure those are the right tenses, anyway—I spent a bit reading up on profane grammar, which was amazing.
~~pfffft~
I’m just imagining Garak narrowing his eyes at Dukat and then quietly spitting "ka slet'U,“ and it’s destroying me~~!
Much to be done with second tongue here, of course, as well as tone of voice. Chief O'Brien might run into trouble with Gilora Rejal when he means to say "well, fuck me,” (baffled), and she hears “well, fuck me,” (flirtatious undertones)… assuming he ever gets to learning Kardasi, I suppose.
An analogue to “fuck you” might be “in your ajan”, ie. cufka'ajan (shoof-kah'ahzhan). If someone’s insulting you and you turn to him, smile, and say “cufka'ajan,” you are going to start a fight. That is not polite-argument.
You can also say se'ajan (say'ahzhan), “of-ajan”, to comment on someone’s bright idea; ie. that must be where they pulled it out of.
chequerootlurks
