tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Oct 24 09:48:40 1996

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: Words from the wild

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

It's certainly plausible that "parmach" developed a meaning of "love" from
who-knows-what origins (consider "understand" which has nothing to do with
standing under anything, and "delight" which has nothing to do with making
darkness [the latter at least I know; it was a respelling of "delite" along
the lines of "light" to which it is not related, but people thought it
was]).  The question is more who's doing the development.

This all smacks of humpty-dumptyism.  It's being argued that these words
acquire their meanings *because* fans/Paramount writers/actors use them,
and "when I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean, and
nothing else," as Humpty Dumpty says in _Through the Looking-Glass_ (or
words to that effect).  But, as he says later on, "The question is, which
is to be master?"  And that's what it boils down to.  Who *is* going to be
master and arbiter over what is and what is not Klingon/tlhIngan Hol?  The
argument that Klingon should conform to what the writers say because after
all, natural languages also develop as the result of many people's actions
doesn't really hold together.  Yes, natural languages are not the product
of one person's mind, but they're the product of people who are using the
thing to communicate, and who start out knowing what the language is like.
The Paramount writers/actors aren't using Klingon to communicate; they are
under no compulsion to keep anything consistent internally (and usually
don't.  Note the same phenomenon occurs with Star Trek's science).  In
order for the language to develop in a way that a natural language would
develop, you either need a fairly large group of native speakers (we don't
have that) or at least someone with some linguistic training who can make
an effort to simulate the effect of a speaker-base, as best he can (we have
that, but he's not a Paramount scriptwriter).

~mark

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.4, an Emacs/PGP interface

iQB1AwUBMm+dxcppGeTJXWZ9AQE/7QL/Sry0GJ5hSqyt3a/qFegztQWgAAH+qkMh
/QYGvQo+WE7NZrMiWjBv5HO3cgysRIDQ3J9IRaEX/RSzPZPVI4N2xXCF1i1Lilo0
RHXih9vp2LufDVmb2dIG+OgebM551/1E
=W40q
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Back to archive top level