tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jun 20 03:59:30 2006

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Re: Neologisms (was Re: I have a few questions that confuse me...)

QeS 'utlh ([email protected])



ghItlhpu' Captain Kalaa:
>Sometimes I have SO much to say on this subject I feel
>it will suffocate me, and yet I am trying to be as
>brief as possible here.  I believe that many people
>here are well-educated and articulate, but are also
>male.

'ej qatlh qay'? loDpu' lutu'lu'mo' Dubot nuq? nuq Daja'meH tlhIngan Hol 
Dalo' 'e' DaHech? 'utchugh be', chaq DuboQlaH Qov.

I don't understand what the problem you have is. What sort of cultural gaps 
do you intend to fill in? Speaking from experience, I can tell you that when 
you reach a certain level in the language, recasting becomes a whole lot 
easier, and you can quite happily say extraordinarily complex things in 
Klingon. Here's an example, the beginning of a scientific paper:

"...A one-million-year-old calvarium found in the Daka Member of Ethiopia's 
Middle Awash may shed new light on the diversity of Homo erectus."
<"Daka Ethiopia muvpu'wI' Awash botlh"Daq wa''uy'ben nach Hom yor tu'lu', 
'ej pImqu'law' "Homo erectus" nuvpu'Hey chaq 'e' 'anglaH.>

See? Except for the proper names, that's entirely in Klingon, and it's 
actually a little shorter than the English version. The problem is coming to 
grips with the idea that what you'd say with one word in English is not 
necessarily what you'd say with one word, or even one sentence, in Klingon. 
Of course, it goes back the other way too.

Ultimately, as soon as control of Klingon is given to an open community, 
Klingon as a language will fall apart. It will splinter and form dialects 
and variants, and the speaker of one variant may not understand the speaker 
of another variant, leading eventually to the destruction of Klingon as a 
means of communication. This is why Esperanto is so rigidly controlled. 
Within the grammar of Esperanto, new words based on its vast derivational 
system are encouraged. However, if people were to start bringing in their 
own root words, that would be it for Esperanto as a medium of communication.

QeS 'utlh
tlhIngan Hol yejHaD pabpo' / Grammarian of the Klingon Language Institute


not nItoj Hemey ngo' juppu' ngo' je
(Old roads and old friends will never deceive you)
     - Ubykh Hol vIttlhegh

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