The Bible?! So Jesus is supposed to be Klingon, too? And maybe Kahless (sp?) is God, and he created the Earth after he left the Klingon home planet? That would explain why Klingons are humanoid – or rather, why humans are Klingonoid.
Getting back to the ‘Undiscovered Country’, the use of this metaphor was very appropos for the context of the movie. They are not talking about ‘the future’ but rather the uncertainty of making a choice to face a terrifying future. Hamlet isn’t talking about ‘death’ in his soliloquy; he is talking about the fact men don’t choose to die to escape a bad life because they don’t know what the future holds if they die. In the movie, the Klingons, AND the Federation, face a most uncertain future if they give up their unhappy, but at least comfortable war. For the reactionary elements, they view that uncertain future as a death, and desire to avoid it, fearing exactly the choice Hamlet took.
Mind you, I ain’t sayin’ that Star Trek movies are exactly deep, but at least the metaphor was reasonable. 
And I had forgotten the “dogs of war” quote, etc., which proved once again that old Bill did write some pretty good stuff…
DSYoundEsq:
Not in the entire soliloquy, but definitely in the phrase in question:
… who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Bluepony’s excerpt gave the false impression that “the undiscover’d country … puzzles the will” without mentioning what “country” was meant. But “the undiscover’d country from whose bourn no traveller returns” is just a description of death or what comes after it.
neuro-trash grrrl is still closest to an explanation, but as I said, I don’t quite buy it.
andros wrote:
Don’t laugh, there really ARE such things as native Esperanto speakers!
Consider this scenario: Man from the U.S., woman from Sweden, meet and fall madly in love at an Esperanto convention. He speaks no Swedish, she speaks no English, but they both speak Esperanto, so when they get married and move in together they end up speaking Esperanto around the house. When they have a baby and their baby later learns to speak, guess which language it’s going to be speaking first!
And regards number of Esperanto speakers in the world, estimates range anywhere from 100,000 to 2 million, depending on how you define “Esperanto speaker”. This still outnumbers Klingon speakers.
Quick-N-Dirty Aviation: Trading altitude for airspeed since 1992.
The developers of the Klingon language, just for spite (any of you who spent hours conjegating verbs can sympathize) decided to develope a language with no verb “to be” in it. When they were hit with the script for The Undiscovered Country they had some serious scrambling to do since Plummer, of course, quotes “To be or not to be…” at the dinner.
To go off topic from the OP since I know everyone loves that ;), the creator of the Klingon language, Marc Okrand, decided that when creating it, that if he had followed a rule in an earth language, he would go against another on purpose (so I hear). I like languages with no verb ‘to be’ in it, since it makes certain translations tricky (and it makes a person think hard about how they would say what might be pretty much idiomatic in languages with the verb to be).
‘The beginning calls for courage; the end demands care’
Re Esperanto: Actually, I personally know two native Esperanto speakers. Their Croatian mother and French-Canadian father met at an Esperanto congress (in Finland, I believe) and eventually got married. They raised the children in all three languages.
Re the number of Esperanto speakers, the canonical figure is 2 million, but figures range from the high hundred thousands to 6 million (in the Guinness Book of Records).
Incidentally, if you’re wondering:
Chu esti au ne esti; tiel staras
Jen la demando…
-Zamenhof’s translation of Hamlet
Ivick, [/URL=http://www.]The Onion is a parody newspaper. All stories in it are humor, not factual news stories.
Dang it, we need a preview page. That should The Onion.
Aiyaaa, toz vahos sorohu che apesperanto, yo feful. Kelo sahip yu tarir! Yo gahas demdono tahas fe tseipo!
That’s what I think, to go way off topic here. Email me if you want to know what I said (hopefully my mailbox is receiveing outside messages now).
‘The beginning calls for courage; the end demands care’
“Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war” is not from Henry V, though. I’m 99% sure it’s from Julius Caesar, but I don’t have Bartlett’s handy, so don’t take this as gospel…
Let every student of nature take this as a rule – that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion.
- Francis Bacon
How about “Wrong us, do we not. . .”
(Sorry, I don’t remember the exact line.)
“Prick us, do we not bleed? Tickle us, do we not laugh? Wrong us, do we not seek revenge?” is from the Merchant of Venice. It is spoken by the Jewish moneylender Shylock, during the trial in which he contests his right to the “pound of flesh” from Antonio, as per their contract. Essentially, what the line boils down to is “Hey, Jews are people too…”, to render it somewhat less eloquently. This line often pops up in racial-equality contexts, with or without the “revenge” part, depending upon the mood of the speaker.
P.S. Feel free to correct any mistakes in the above. It’s been a long time since I read “Merchant”.
It’s Marcus Antonius whining about the bad guys whacking Caesar:
Julius Caesar Act III, Scene 1
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.
JB
Lex Non Favet Delictorum Votis
Merchant of Venice Act III, Scene 1
…I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
JB
Lex Non Favet Delictorum Votis
Merchant of Venice Act III, Scene 1
…I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.
JB
Lex Non Favet Delictorum Votis
*tracer: Don’t laugh, there really ARE such things as native Esperanto speakers!
Consider this scenario: Man from the U.S., woman from Sweden, meet and fall madly in love at an Esperanto convention. He speaks no Swedish, she speaks no English, but they both speak Esperanto, so when they get married and move in together they end up speaking Esperanto around the house. When they have a baby and their baby later learns to speak, guess which language it’s going to be speaking first!*
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Since there is no Esperantoland, nobody can be a native. They could be EFL - Esperanto as a First Language.
AWB: However much I tire of the overly hopeful and zealous nature of many e-oists (which is why as a conlanger, I am an artlanger), i have to say that “nnative speaker” and “first Language” are used interchangeably, so even though I grudgingly say this, yes there can be “native Esperanto (e-o) speakers”
‘The beginning calls for courage; the end demands care’