tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 29 18:56:26 2003
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Re: MOST terminology
On Monday 29 December 2003 07:41, David Trimboli wrote:
> From: "Christian Einfeldt" <[email protected]>
David,
Thanks so much for this explanation of how Klingon grows and developes.
Your explanation is going to be very helpful to those of us who are
new Klingonists trying to localize Klingon for OpenOffice.org.
Because your explanation was so thorough, I am going to post it to the
ooklingon mailing list, and copy it as an explanation for other
potential new Klingonists who show up during the course of the
project.
>
> > Okay. Thanks. Good to know. I was under the mistaken
> > impression, then, that Dr. Okrand was like the clockmaker who
> > creates the clock, winds the clock, and then lets the universe
> > expand on its own momentum. It sounds like that impression was
> > incorrect. It sounds as if there might even be regular reviews or
> > meetings which Dr. Okrand conducts to evaluate new submissions,
> > etc? Is that guess correct? or how does Dr. Okrand meet and
> > interact with the Klingonist community, which I guess is rather
> > large and international.
>
> Oh, no. In order to study "The Klingon Language," as opposed to
> "Somebody Else's Klingon Language," it's necessary to act as a
> fictional anthropologist/linguist, and try to capture pieces of the
> Klingon language as actually spoken by Klingons. This, anyway, is
> the theoretical basis of this list, and one of the guiding
> principles of the KLI, at least as far as I see it.
>
> There are no committees, no reviews, no official means to decide
> language issues. If Klingons were real, then such institutions
> would be pointless: how could a committee decide the proper use of
> someone else's language? We (the mailing list and the KLI, for the
> most part) stick to the story that Marc Okrand has a Klingon contact
> who is providing this information, and when Marc announces
> information, it.is "real" in that it comes from a Klingon.
> Certainly Okrand himself keeps up this story: most of his articles
> in HolQeD these days refer to Maltz (his Klingon informant) and how
> he feels about certain pieces of language information.
>
> If a group of people were to decide that they were going to form a
> committee to expand Klingon, would this really be Klingon anymore?
> It might be "Klingon Mk. II" or "Committee Klingon," but it wouldn't
> be the Klingon spoken by Klingons and reported to us by Okrand.
>
> What if Okrand were on this committee? I doubt he'd do it. He's a
> busy man, having nothing to do with Klingon. I think he's as
> attached to the idea of a Klingon informant telling us real
> information about the language as some of us are.
>
> He does compromise, though. The KLI gives him an annual "wish
> list," in which we suggest words, topics, and ideas for him to ask
> Maltz about. Sometimes Maltz gets back to him on some of these
> things, and he writes up an article for HolQeD. (The upcoming
> HolQeD article about body functions is an example of this.) He has
> been asked to make translations for a number of Star Trek- and
> Klingon-related products, including trading cards, a poster, even a
> television commercial, and from these we often learn more about
> Klingon.
>
> My fear is that if Klingon were to be expanded by committee, that
> committee would turn this alien language into one that contains
> mostly familiar concepts. "We need a word for 'car'" would produce
> the "Klingon" word for "car." Do Klingons even USE cars? Do they
> have their own word for it, or have they just borrowed an English
> term?
>
> SuStel
> Stardate 3993.5