tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 01 18:53:31 1996
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Re: KLBC: Thinking and compounding
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: KLBC: Thinking and compounding
- Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 20:56:09 -0500
Denny Shortliffe writes:
>...It was NOT my thesis that Klingon should have a verb "to be" or
>that, if it existed, it should be used more; it was that the fact that we
>use it more (I know, ANY use is more than in Klingon) is NOT repeat NOT an
>indication that we use it too much!
Try writing in English without using "to be". Many find this exercise
a difficult (if not impossible) one. You'll likely discover that your
writing becomes more exciting, more full of action. Our predilection for
using passive voice, and for describing things using adjectives only,
weakens the language in *many* people's opinion. I think the variety of
English which has had the verb "to be" struck from it has the name "E-prime"
(have I remembered correctly, ~mark?).
>BTW, I know what MO said about "to be" in the dictonary, but shurely you
>will agree that he fudged just a bit when he included a verb that means
>"there is, there are", {tu'} (used with indefinite subject, {tu'lu'}).
That goes a bit too far, I think. {tu'lu'} does not *mean* "there is",
though English often can *translate* it that way. In my view, he didn't
"fudge" anything here.
>Another BTW (this is linguistics in general, not Klingon specifically),
>neither French nor Portuguese use "to be" when translating "there is,
>there are" (Fr. { il y a }, Port. { tem }).
One finds Spanish <<hay>> as well.
-- ghunchu'wI'