Appearances of Klingon: on television - in movies - in the news - in commercials - in politics - in literature - Translations

Discovery T-shirt

Back of the shirt

Since July 2019 there is a T-shirt available on the German catalogue EMP with a Klingon phrase from Star Trek: Discovery (1). The front of it shows a large trefoil, the back shows a phrase taken from Star Trek: Discovery.

A similar shirt is sold on Amazon, apparently directly from Star Trek. On this one, the text and trefoil are on the front side of the shirt, but the used design is identical. On the preview image, the license text is clearly visible. (2)

Shirt 1 Analysis

The used font is a not yet published one, but obviously based on the known pIqaD. The creator of the font is not known, but it is very easy to read and very recognisible.

The article description clearly shows what the phrase means, i.e. "Remain Klingon" used in the first episode of DSC. When applying the font, the designer obviously was not aware of the usage or the meaning of the letters, not knowing that tlh and ng are single sounds written by one single symbol, so they are displayed incorrectly on the shirt as three letters t+l+H resp. n+g. That means that the phrase tlhIngan maH taHjaj is written as tlHInghan maH taHjaj.

The comparison using pIqaD makes the error a lot more visible:

T-shirt: tlhingan mah tahjaj
correct: xifan mah tahjaj

Shirt 2 Analysis

Shirt 2

close-up of the words

On July 18, 2020, another shirt was published in the EMP catalogue.(3) This one also seems to be a licenced shirt. It bears the Logo of the House of Mo'Kai, and two identical fields with Klingon letters, written in the Discovery Font. The back is empty.

There is a variation of this where the motive is on the back side of a hoodie, with an additional trefoil below the logo.

The written letters read as ngISwI' 12. This is interesting, because the word has no known meaning, but still looks like a correctly formed word instead of just random letters. There are several possibilities:

Maybe there is a typo and the word should be nISwI' disruptor or ngaSwI' container
Maybe they did not intend to type a Klingon word, but tried "fiswiz" instead, whatever that means.
Maybe the letter mapping is incorrect, and they tried to type something entirely different, although that's unlikely
Maybe it's the result of an automatic Bing translation, although that's also unlikely, since the word ngIS ("lubricant") has been revealed only few weeks before the release of this shirt, and its meaning does not make any sense combined with the suffix -wI' (in either meaning).
Maybe it's incorrect grammar combined with (at that point) incorrect vocabulary. ngIS had appeared in the 1997 novel Honor Bound, although it was not canon until 2020. Combined with the possessive suffix -wIj, it could mean "my lubricant" or "my grease".