tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue May 21 11:42:23 1996
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Re: tlhob mughwI' & KLBC
- From: "Mark J. Reed" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: tlhob mughwI' & KLBC
- Date: Tue, 21 May 96 14:42:19 EDT
- In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 21 May 1996 11:10:50 -0700. <[email protected]>
[email protected] writes:
\ But I always assumed, that you are at a location in time, which is shown by
\ the clock, thus {-Daq} would be possible to add, as suffix, to a place in
\ time. Because, as you know time goes forward, thus indicating that there is
\ directional movement, but I think as this is not indicated in any of the
\ tlhIngan Hol canons, I can savely say, "I'm wrong, at this point in time."(c;{{{
It's hard to make this distinction when we're speaking English,
precisely because English uses mostly the same set of terms for both
time and space (notable exceptions being "where" vs. "when" and
"there" vs. "then"). But you can't decide that something is okay in
Klingon just because it is okay in English. General relativity
notwithstanding, we perceive time and space as two different things,
and many languages have separate concepts for them. And, as I said,
I think the canon example we *do* have in the proverb points very
clearly toward an inability to use {-Daq} to refer to space. If temporal
{-Daq} were legal, then why would Okrand translate "... in one night"
as {qaStaHvIS wa' ram}? That's terribly inefficient if, as you
postulate, {wa' ramDaq} would serve as well. (And while lots of the
proverb translations are bad, they tend to err on the side of
sloppiness, not precision).
So until and unless we see canon use of {-Daq} for temporal concepts,
I, at least, won't be using it that way.
-marqoS