tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri May 29 09:10:08 1998

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Re: long weekend with MO

DloraH wrote:

: Well, I just spent last weekend hang'n with Marc Okrand.  
: I got answers for some of our questions and a "I'll have to think about that
: one" for some other questions.

This was at a convention over Labor Day weekend or is he a {maqoch} of
yours? ;-)  Thanks for passing this on to the rest of us.

>SIS.  In a way everyone was correct with this one.  It rained a few times
>during the weekend, so we were put into the situation to discuss it.
>     SIS
>     SISqu'
>     SIStaH
>     SISchoH
>All correct.
>SISlu', altho grammaticlly correct, he didn't particularly like.  Someone
>COULD use it but to me it sounds like they skipped science class and don't
>know what the subject is.
>You can also give it an object and say things like the clouds rained down
>cats and dogs. ...or something like that; you get the idea.
>But when Marc and I went outside and drops of water were falling on us, he
>looked up and simply said "SIS".

"Everyone was correct" except those insisting - for reasons known only to
them - that Klingon requires an overt subject like the awkward *{SIS muD} or
the better, if equally wrong, *{SIS chal} or *{SIS 'engmey}.  (On the eve of
the 21st century, we forget that "atmosphere, air" - a mixture of invisible,
tasteless, intangible, breathable gases - is a fairly modern
physical/chemical concept dating back only three centuries or so, while
talking about the weather must belong to the oldest strata of the language.)
Sometimes the answer is just as simple as it appears.

It looks like Glen Proechel was vindicated about indefinite or unspecified
subjects being allowed in Klingon.  Why some people objected to this idea in
light of {-lu'} or {net} constructions puzzled me.  I always thought you
could simply say {SIS} "It's raining" - just like Latin _pluit_ or French (I
think) _pluie_ - or {va, SIStaH} "Damn, still raining!" and {HurDaq SISqu'
jay'} "It's raining bloody cats and dogs out there!", etc.  I wanted to stay
out of that particular argument since we had no canon either way for any
sort of weather talk.  Now we do.

Voragh

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