tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jul 11 17:35:30 2003
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Re: "How is your food?" "What book?"
Holtej:
>In my opinion (FWIW) it's not asking the question you think it's asking.
Agreed. What's FWIW?
>I don't think we know whether a Klingon will interpret {chay' 'oH SojlIj'e'}
>literally, or whether they map it onto various underlying meanings as we do
>in English, and thus get to the "does your food taste good" kind of meaning.
> That's why people were suggesting paraphrases such as {'ey''a' SojlIj} or
>{SojlIj DatIv'a'}.
I would like to add that the Klingon culture and language is a very direct one. When you speak english (or any other terran language),
and ask "How is your food?", then this is just small-talk, and usually just means something like "is it good?"
It's not a question about a specific quality of the food. Perhaps Data or Mr. Spock would answer "It's warm."
The two suggested klingon paraphrases above show what I'm trying to explain: they can both be answered by one word.
Quvar.