tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 21 08:08:54 1997
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Re: New suffix in KGT
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: New suffix in KGT
- Date: Thu, 21 Aug 1997 11:08:51 -0400 (EDT)
- In-reply-to: <[email protected]> (messagefrom Terrence Donnelly on Tue, 19 Aug 1997 07:40:54 -0700 (PDT))
>Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 07:40:54 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Terrence Donnelly <[email protected]>
>
>I was surprised and pleased to see that Okrand has given us a >new verb suffix<:
>-la'/-luH, meaning "one can". It should now be possible to translate things
>like {ghopDap yoS chIjla'bogh} "navigable asteroid field". True, he says it's
>slang and should be avoided unless the speaker is very comfortable with
>Klingon culture, but, hey, I'm feeling pretty comfortable with it, and I bet
>you are, too.
Comfortable with the language, yes. But not with hearing that sort of
slang too much (as Okrand says: it's rare). I also wouldn't go so far as
to call them "new verb suffixes". Yes, you could use {ghopDap yoS
chIjla'bogh} (though I usually think one navigates a SHIP, not an asteroid
field), but probably not more than once or maybe twice in a conversation.
Using these suffixes is instantly marked as odd-sounding slang, and Okrand
says so. It's sort of like if I were talking about thought or something,
and scrabbled for word and finally grinned and said "so first there's the
set of all... all... come-uppable ideas..." OK, that's cute and it makes
my point and it's understood, but if I start using it as a regular term it
will start to sicken you ("Right, so I have one come-uppable idea, and you
think of two other come-uppable ideas, and tell me one of them, and I try
to compare your come-uppable idea with my come-uppable idea...." Ugh).
This is actually not a bad analogy, I am starting to think. It's a misuse
of grammar which we grin at and accept because it's the ungrammaticality
which makes things work... but you wouldn't use it formally, nor often.
>If Okrand is going to monkey with verb suffixes, I have a suggestion: use
>certain
>verbs as if they were suffixes. Three prime canditates for me would be {neH},
>{Hech} (both as Type 2's) and {chaw'} (as a Type 5), so you could say things
>like:
>
>*qama' vIHoHneHbej "I definitely want to kill the prisoner"
>*qama' vIHoHHechbej "I definitely intend to kill the prisoner"
>*qama' vIHoHchaw'bej "I'm definitely allowed to kill the prisoner"
>
>He could call them recently discovered suffixes, youthful slang or an ad-hoc
>grammatical transgression like -la'/-luH.
>
>Well, just an idea from my wishlist...
Wish all you want... :)
~mark