tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 25 17:47:01 2004

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[tlhIngan-Hol] Re: tlhIngan-Hol Digest 25 Feb 2004

QeS lagh ([email protected]) 

jIghItlh:
> >Yes, but it's human languages that resemble Klingon in most cases, not 
>the
> >other way around.

ghItlh Quvar:
>huh? chay' pIm?

Sorry, my semantics are a little weird. But the way I see it, any features 
that Klingon shares with Terran languages are caused by the oddities of the 
*Terran languages*, not because of the way *Klingon* was designed. That's 
what I meant. (OVS word order, for instance, and a really really weird 
phoneme set.)

jIghItlhtaH:
> >'ach tlhIngan HolvaD mu' qIDmey nob Human Holmey law': *Spanish* Hol,
> >*Mandarin* Hol, DIvI' Hol je.
> >But many human languages have contributed vocabulary to Klingon: Spanish,
> >Mandarin and English, to name a few.

ghItlhtaH Quvar:
>among them also German, Japanese, Yiddish, ...

lugh'a'? vISovbe'pu'. 'ach <<DaS>>'e' vIQub. :)

Also French... (there's a legend going around that <<moD>> "to hurry" was 
based on the name of the musical group Depeche Mode, and "depeche" is a form 
of the French verb "depecher", meaning "to hurry". As I recall, Dr Okrand 
couldn't recall whether this was in fact the case, but said that it was 
entirely possible.)


ghItlhtaH Quvar:
>{mu' qIDmey} is sort of "puns", not "vocabulary" {mu'tay'}.
>And now we need to distinguish. Of course Marc Okrand has been inspired 
>from other languages to
>create Klingon words, but *in the game*, there is not a single word coming 
>from Earth (except for
>qa'vIn and the like)

This is as I intended. I was referring to "outside the game", as you put it. 
:) Many words and their meanings have been taken from other languages. From 
a Terran point of view, it's almost another entire game in itself trying to 
work out where some of these things might have come from.


> >wot DoS, ghIq wot, ghIq wot vangwI' - tIghvam lulo' Human Hol law'. ('ach
> >Hoch mu'tlheghDaq lulo' Hol puSqu' - lo' *Hixkaryana* Hol).
> >Many human languages also use some form of Object-Verb-Subject word 
>order.
> >(Only a couple use it as the default, though.)
>
>There are only six (6, yes, no more) possibilities to order O,V,S. The 
>Klingon Object-Verb-Subject is
>one of the least used on earth, I guess that's why MO chose it, to have a 
>more alien touch.

'e' vISov:

vangwI', DoS, wot = *Turkish* Hol, *Japanese* Hol je
vangwI', wot, DoS = *French* Hol DIvI' Hol je
wot, vangwI', DoS = *Irish* Hol *Egyptian* ngo' Hol je
wot, DoS, vangwI' = *Malagasy* Hol
DoS, wot, vangwI' = tlhIngan Hol *Hixkaryana* Hol je
DoS, vangwI', wot = *Apurina* Hol, *Xavante* Hol je

For some reason, all combinations where the object comes before the subject 
are rare.

But Latin can use basically any word order; so can Basque, Kabardian, and 
many other languages which are inflected for case. (English, for instance, 
can use OSV word order in emphatic sentences (in spoken language, at least): 
"And you I just don't know about!", and VSO in questions: "Was that the man 
you hit?")

I was just making the point that OVS is only rare as a *default* order; that 
is, the order in which an unemphatic declarative sentence comes in.

> >qech vIghaj je, 'ach lughchu' 'e' vISovbe'. Human Segh 'oSmeH mojaq [-pu]
> >lo' *Nez Perce* Hol. tlhIngan Hol chenmoHtaHvIS Marc Okrand, ngIp 
>tlhIngan
> >Hol 'e' boHar'a'?
>
>Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes words resemble others just by accident, like I 
>found out the hebrew word
>for {Hov} is *qoHav* - coincidence?   ;-)

luq. I was just wondering, because I know that Dr Okrand has had some 
extensive experience with the languages of the western USA.

>
> >By the way, does everyone understand what I mean by <<wot DoS>> (direct
> >object) and <<wot vangwI'>> (subject)? I wanted to get a fairly concise 
>and
> >accurate translation of the ideas, since we don't have grammatical terms 
>for
> >such things yet.
>
>{DoS} is used frequently as "object"

qatlho'qu'. DaH jIbItbe'choHlaH. {{:)

Savan.

QeS lagh

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