tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Aug 08 14:57:53 1998

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Re: KLBC - attempt at translation, v 1.1

---David Trimboli <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >This is the presumption:
> >1. I say, "'eyqu' HIqvam. nuqDaq 'oH puchpa''e'?"
> >2. Maltz writes down what I said on a datapad.
> 
> And he writes it in {pIqaD}.  This is the crux of the matter, and it
> > should be stated explicitly.

Yes, I definitely meant that. That's why I didn't say anything about
what Maltz wrote.

> >3. Kruge comes in.  we hand him the datapad and ask him to read aloud
> >what is written on it.
> >4. Kruge says, reading, "'eyqu' HIqvam.  nuqDaq 'oH puchpa''e'."  He
> >may pronounce it diffently than I did (better!) and stress different
> >words in the sentence, but he reads back the same words.
> 
> What YOU wrote Kruge as saying is invariant.  You described his
> pronunciation, which was exactly the same as what you originally
said.  Let
> me show you what the problem is.
> 
> Because I can't represent {pIqaD} in ASCII (if we even knew how to
write
> it), I'm going to use symbols to get the point across.
> 
> 1. You say, "tlhIngan maH!  vIttlhegh 'oH mu'tlhegh'e'."
> 2. Maltz writes down what you said on a datapad in {pIqaD}.  It
looks like
> this: "!@ #    $% ^ &*~"
> 3. Kruge comes in.  We hand him the datapad and ask him to read
aloud what
> is written on it.
> 4. Kruge says, reading, "ghlIngan ma!  vItghlegh 'o mu'ghlegh."
> 5. We conclude that Kruge is from Morska.
> 
> On the other hand, if you wrote "tlhIngan maH! vIttlhegh 'oH
mu'tlhegh'e'"
> in our Romanized characters, which we are forced to do, you are
writing it
> with exactly one pronunciation: {ta' Hol}.  If Kruge picked up your
> Romanized sentence, he's pronounce it as {tlhIngan maH!  vIttlhegh 'oH
> mu'tlhegh'e'} rather than {ghlIngan ma!  vItghlegh 'o mu'ghlegh}
(provided
> he could produce the {tlh} sound).
> 
> Maybe the {pIqaD} symbol for {-'e'} is silent to Morskans.  Maybe
it's not
> written by anybody, but pronounced in {ta' Hol} anyway.   Maybe
{pIqaD} is
> written differently for the two dialects.  We don't know at all, and
to
> treat the Roman letters as you would {pIqaD} is just plain wrong.
> 
> >It's possible that the writing system doesn't include all the parts
of
> >oral speech, or includes some marks that represent tone of voice or
> >something like that.  Maybe a Morkan speaker would read "nuqDaq oh
> >puchpa," the /'e'/ being something used only in speech and thus not
> >marked on the page.
> 
> Ah.  I speculated as much above.
> 
> >The idea isn't that reading pIqaD sounds identical to speaking, just
> >that pIqaD is a method of recording language .  If it doesn't work
> >that way it doen't seem like much of a writing system. If you don't
> >believe the presumption, then you don't seem to believe that pIqaD is
> >actually a writing system.
> 
> Then we've obviously had a miscommunication somewhere, because it sure
> looked to me like you were saying that the Roman letters were to be
> treated
> as written Klingon.

Yes, a micommunication.  We're arguing the same side of the same
points now.  I'm one of the people who doesn't learn KLI pIqaD because
it's just too convenient like Okrand's transcription to be believable.
 I don't know how Klingons represent their language in writing, I just
assume that they can read and write it, to reproduce utterances as we
described above.

> >What variations from being able to read back what was spoken are you
> >considering?
> 
> Oh, there are plenty more of these.  {pIqaD} may not be equally
> understandable to all dialects.  It may be changed from one to
another.  Or,
> it could remain absolutely the same.  We don't know.

Dialect variations get complicated because they might or might not
affect the writing system.  The Klingon writing system *could* be such
that when Maltz writes down "qetlhbe' quv" and we hand it to Kruge,
Kruge reads aloud "Dalbe' batlh."  None of these differnces affects
the point that I was trying to make about written vs. spoken Klingon.

> The thing that started all of this was, I believe, trying to decide if
> written Klingon is more formal than spoken Klingon.  My assertion is 
> that
> the Klingon *WE* write, using ASCII, *IS* spoken Klingon, a 
> transcription
> system.

Yes.  It could be a transcription of Klingon as it is spoken, or it
could be a transcription of Klingon as it sounds when Kruge is reading
aloud from a formal written document.  

> We're just not actually speaking it (well, *I* do).  Trying 
> to say
> that Romanized character text should be written according to > >
speculative formality of Klingon writing does not sit well at all with
> me. 

Then let us use Okrand romanization to represent formal read-aloud
Klingon.  I *think* the question we were discussing was what
differnces would there be in formal vs. informal Klingon.  I suspect
that in speaking Klingons would say things like:

majaH 'e' vIchup ... tachDaq ... qoreQ wIghommeH.

Whereas if the Klingon were speaking to someone he wanted to impress,
or reading from something he had written down after a bit of thought,
he'd say:

qoreQ wIghommeH tachDaq majaH 'e' vIchup

I suspect that if written Klingon differentiates between clipped and
not clipped, that messages written on the mirror in soap tend to be
clipped, while former court orders are excrutiatingly correct, down to
the last /lu-/ and /DI-/.

I wasn't attempting to use Okrand romanization to represent the
differnce between the sounds that come out of a Klingon's mouth,
whether spontaneous or reading aloud, and the pIqaD trancription
system. I didn't get the idea others were, either.
==

Qov - Beginners' Grammarian

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