tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon May 11 10:00:37 1998

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Re: -ghach (oh no)

Qov has already answered and others will likely add their
opinion and perspectives. Mine is merely one more.

According to m109:
> 
> 
> I don't know why people have such a problem using -ghach. I went from
> first principles (naDHa'ghach) and worked out that it means...
> 
> The act of <verb>ing - <verb>ghach
> 
> This works for any verb that makes sense in this context.
> 
> eg. naDHa'ghach -  The act of discommending   (a discommendation)
> 
> I hope this helps some people and doesn't annoy too many others.
> qelayn
 
Okrand had a special problem when he needed the word
"discommendation". He had a closely related verb, {naD}, and no
other related word to make a noun out of. {naDHa'} clearly
means to "discommend", but with the verb suffix, it looks too
much like a verb to be used as a noun.

He has used certain words as both nouns and verbs, but you can
usually tell the difference because of the word placement or
the affixes whether it is being used as a noun or a verb.
{naDHa'} looks completely like a verb, so if he were to use it
as a noun, he had to mark it somehow to make it obvious that it
was a noun. He came up with {-ghach}.

There are certain things Okrand has done with the language to
solve that kind of singular, rare problem, but by making those
exceptional cases, he clearly did not mean to rampantly change
the entire orientation of the language.

Another favorite case in point of mine is the use of {rIntaH}
slapped on the end of a sentence in order to accomplish the
same function as the suffix {-pu'}, except, perhaps, a little
more forcefully. Well, that was used by Okrand exactly once.

In a scene where the actress portraying Valkris had already
spoken all her lines in English during the filming and Okrand
was asked to have her redub the lines in Klingon, he had to
keep her lips moving after she had finished saying the odd
equivalent of "Transmission complete." Keeping her lips moving
was the only reason {rIntaH} was invented for this function.
Okrand never used the word again in this way. Still, he
justifies it in TKD.

Does that mean that every time we want to indicate the
perfective we should use {rIntaH}? Well, no. If we do that, we
clearly do not use the langauge as we see Okrand use it in every
instance except that one moment in one movie for one special
reason.

{-ghach} is similar. It was built to solve one problem. It was
not meant to reverse Klingon's massive favoritism towards verbs
over nouns. In Klingon, a well formed verb is a sentence. A
well formed noun is, well, a well formed noun. Period. A noun
needs a verb to support it in order for it to be a part of a
sentence.

There are many ways in which English, in particular, favors
nouns. We turn our verbs into nouns quite casually, favoring
certain secondary verbs to support these nouns in sentences: 

"Give me your answer," {Answer me}
"Make your decision," {Decide}
"We are having a meeting," {We are meeting} 
"We reached consensus on the proposal," {We consented to the
proposal}

Or even worse: "We consensed on the proposal." (Making up a
whole new, non-existing verb, ignorantly extrapolating on a
faulty interpretation of a noun's root.) AAAAARRRRRGH!

(and in newer, more grating examples, we use any noun as a verb:

"I'll pencil you in."
"I'll Email you about it tomorrow."
"He FAXed me the plan."
"Wait and I'll Xerox it for you."
"I'll PowerPoint it for tomorrow's presentation."

So, when we start to say something in Klingon, as beginners,
the first thing we short-sightedly seek to do is translate word
for word instead of idea by idea. Since English uses nouns as
verbs and verbs as nouns, we want to do the same thing in
Klingon. This makes {-ghach} very attractive to us. In fact, it
is far more attractive to us than it would ever be to a Klingon
WHICH IS THE WHOLE POINT.

There are definitely appropriate times to use {-ghach}. I,
myself, use it maybe half a dozen times a year and feel very
good about each time I use it. Meanwhile, if you find yourself
using it a lot more often than that, you just might be missing
the point.

The second thing to know about {-ghach} that Okrand did reveal
to us when he gave us a better explanation of its use is that
it interacts with verb suffixes. In other words, in
{naDHa'ghach}, it is of the REVERSAL of commendation that is
being nominalized. In {lo'laHghach}, it is the ABILITY to use
that is being nominalized.

For a Klingon, it sounds really weird to make up a word like
{naDghach} or {lo'ghach} because there is no suffix there to
give color and meaning to the nominalization. I'll try to make
up some examples using the verb {bej} "watch".

bejtaHghach - ongoing surveillance
bejlI'ghach - surveillance with a definite goal in mind
bejlaHghach - the ability to watch
bejlu'ghach - the state of being watched
bejnISghach - the necessity of watching
bejrupghach - readiness to watch
bejghach - ? Something to do with watching. I can't quite tell
what. "watchation" "watchness". It just sounds weird.

Klingons consider {-ghach} added to bare verbs to sound weird.
I don't know any better way to explain this. They also consider
language laced with lots of {-ghach} words to be strange. It is
simply not the way they talk. It sounds indirect and evasive to
replace {HIjangchu'!} with {jangchu'ghachlIj HInob!}

As a little piece of insider advice, indirect and evasive
langauge is not highly prized among Klingons. Their response to
it is not always desirable.

charghwI'

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