tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jun 28 06:23:51 1994
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Why Klingon Poetry Doesn't Rhyme
With all due respect for anyone who is willing to undertake the
positively mammoth task of translating English into Klingon, or to write
a poem in Klingon for any reason, I have to disagree with the idea of a
rhyming dictionary in Klingon, at least if it is used to create English
type rhymes.
Here are my reasons why I believe that Klingon wouldn't have the same
sort of "rhyme" that English does:
1. In English, there is a lot of flexibility in changing around word
order, you can get away with "my dearest love", "dearest love of mine",
"mine own love dearest", and so on, which really helps with the way that
you can combine and recombine words. Klingon, as we've all experienced,
is more limited by structure, since the structure, to a fairly large degree,
imposes meaning on the sentence. The O-V-S structure forces some kinds
of words to come last, some of them to come first. Thus, you can't
rearrange the words as nicely, and get the nice rhymy ones to come last.
2. All the suffixes. The suffixes in Klingon have a lot more meaning,
and are a lot more integral to the structure and function of the
sentence, I think, than in English. -vam, -choH, many of the kinds of
suffixes impart a lot of meaning to the words. Yet if you use a lot of
suffixes, as you pretty much have to, you end up (because of the structure
of Klingon) rhyming a whole bunch of suffixes. Why is this a problem?
Well... how many times can you rhyme -pu' to something? -be'? -ta' 'a'?
In my own personal opinion, this is like rhyming "Roses are red, and violets
are blue..." a zillion times. There are going to be some definite limits on
how clever you can be to rhyme things.
3. Klingon simply has less word sounds available. Like the Chinese,
they have fewer possible syllables, and therefore put the idea of meaning
in other areas, such as the structure, suffixes, and so on. This makes
rhyming awfully boring, since there are fewer possible rhyming
combinations. You rhyme "nuch" and "quch". Then what? The
sound itself is not what is sweeping you away in Klingon. That rhyme
adds nothing to the experience of listening to a poem, unlike in
English, where listening for the rhyme is interesting. The SOUND of it
is interesting... it is soothing, clever... it makes you listen closer.
I don't think the same is as true of a language where there is a much
more limited choice.
4. You end up tinkering with grammar in order to rhyme the suffixes. If
there is a -ta' on one line, there is a good chance you'll need a -ta' on
the next line... and you're stuck. Or, if there isn't, how are you going
to be able to find another suffix that rhymes yet will work with the
meaning? You might have to really mess with the
grammar and structure in order to get something that "rhymes" prettily.
Klingon just isn't suited for the idea of iambic pentameter, generally
speaking. You have to bend it out of shape too badly.
5. This next one is my own personal feeling, and has no real basis in
anything other than what I think Klingons are like. Rhyming is sissy stuff.
Klingons say what they feel from the soul. Poetry should be from the
heart(s), to win a mate, or shame your opponent with his cowardice, so
any order or structure on it imposed should be there to increase the
feeling, not to make it "pretty". People don't rhyme off the cuff, they
never have. Can you honestly see the mighty Klingon warrior laboring
over his writing stylus... "what rhymes with tIq'a'?... hmm...
bIq'ta'? Nonono, that's not it... hrmmm...." I can't.
6. This is another reason, which is just my own opinion. Making Klingon
rhyme like English is... well, silly. Why in the galaxy SHOULD Klingon
rhyme like English? Why should it rhyme at all? It's like putting
skirts on the natives when we go out to convert them or something. If we
just put what we want and expect on the something which is SUPPOSED to be
from a totally different part of the galaxy, aren't we guilty of imposing
our views on things? Isn't it a shame, when we could do ANY thing at all
with a totally new, clean, slate, that we chose to use the same old forms
that have been done to death already in our own tongue? Make it rhyme on
the 3rd syllable only. Make it rhyme backwards. Make it rhyme by suffix
class... ANYTHING! For pete's sake, don't do the same old boring thing.
LIVE a little!!!
I think that Klingon poetry, if it has any order imposed on it at all,
would be more like the Japanese haiku and other forms. In those
languages, the pattern provides the rhyme. it's listening for the sound
of the syllables falling in a certain order that adds that audial element
of beauty and suspense. Or perhaps Klingon has a combination rhyme
scheme, like Chinese. Use patterns *and* an additional element. Suffix
types? Number of suffixes? Rhyme with the time of day the poem was
composed.... this shouldn't be some nice neat little bundle, ready to
use by whoever stumbles across them. Poetry just isn't like that.
Perhaps a possible compromise would be to use rhymes for those works
which rhymed in English, and are being translated, since that would be a
sensible use of Klingon rhyme, giving them a taste of what an English
poem would be like. But I have to, personally, abhor the notion of
English rhymes in Klingon poems ... Klingon is far too pretty to limit
this way.
DrujIv