tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 07 20:33:18 1996
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Re: mu' <poH>: mu'meywIj Qav rIntaH
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: mu' <poH>: mu'meywIj Qav rIntaH
- Date: Thu, 7 Mar 1996 23:35:06 -0500
Alex (Lord Sinister) writes:
>The English word is "time." It refers to a moment; a short gap; a
>minute; an epoch. It's _all_ time. No matter how long, or how short.
Yes, the English noun is "time" -- but in this context, it refers not to
a period of time, but to the "time of day". They're not the same thing.
The Klingon noun is {poH}; it means *only* "period of time" (page 100).
>If you're _really_ pedantic (and if you are, may Heaven have helped
>your hapless English teachers!) "time" can also refer to a "period of
>time" the duration of a nanosecond; immeasurably brief to human and
>Klingon, and therefore qualifying for the purpose of most everyday
>activities as "a point in time."
Even if you collapse a "period of time" into a "point in time", you are
still talking about that *moment*. You are not referring to the time of
day at which that moment occurred.
>So, I'm sticking to "poH" until Marc Okrand (and _only_ Marc Okrand)
>says otherwise, and if anyone is _still_ complaining, I can only yell
>"Read Page Nine!"
If you're referring to the reference to the rules being sometimes broken,
be aware that it's talking about the grammar. Our debate here is over
the meaning of a noun in the vocabulary, not a grammatical rule. Over
time, most of us have agreed that the first word in a listing like {SoQ}
"shut, be shut" is there just for the convenience of someone looking up
the word, and the rest of the gloss is the true meaning. This is stated
explicitly in the last paragraph of the introductory remarks to the
Dictionary proper (pages 78-79), and is confirmed in the Klingon-English
side of the dictionary. Again, see page 100: the noun {poH} does *not*
mean "time".
>ja'chuqvam pItlh. _DaH._
nuqjatlh? Heghpu' 'Iv? cho'meH 'ovtaH 'Iv? :-)
-- ghunchu'wI' batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj