tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Dec 19 21:40:33 2010

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Re: monastery

MorphemeAddict ([email protected]) 

I keep hoping for (but not expecting) volume 2 of the Klingon Encyclopedia,
counting KGT as volume 1.
lay'tel SIvten

On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 9:48 PM, lojmIt tI'wI' nuv <
[email protected]> wrote:

> While I'm always happy to get new words, I find a few things bothersome:
>
> 1. It seems that Okrand is down to nouns. It's what people ask him for.
> It's what he gives. It's been a while since he gave us anything else.
>
> 2. While we originally complained about his glosses as being overly vague,
> he now gives us less of a gloss than an even more vague and lengthy
> definition that is difficult to put in a dictionary in any manner that makes
> it functional to look up the English definition and find the word. This one
> is a classic example. He gives us an entire paragraph, and we honestly are
> clueless as to whether or not Okrand intended this to be the building
> complex or the people in it. Is it a location, a cultural organization or a
> society? We don't know. Different people have strong opinions about it, but
> they don't agree.
>
> My personal response is that I feel fortunate in that as an atheist, I
> probably won't need this word very often, so I don't have to struggle to
> clarify wtf I'm talking about if I use it, and if someone else uses it, it
> will probably be about a topic I won't mind if it's a bit vague, because it
> won't make a lot of sense to me either way.
>
> lojmit tI'wI'nuv
>
> On Dec 19, 2010, at 9:05 PM, R Fenwick wrote:
>
> >
> > jIjatlh:
> >> Indeed, if a {ghIn} is really more the community than the building, and
> if
> >> Okrand's note on the term "religious" in the gloss offers as much
> latitude
> >> as it seems to, I wonder if, say, the Old Order Amish (not a monastery
> in
> >> any usual sense of the word) could be considered a {ghIn}.
> >
> > ghItlhpu' naHQun, jatlh:
> >> So now I have to ask, is a ghIn defined by geography? There's an Amish
> >> community a few hours North of me. There is a defined geographic area
> for
> >> this group.
> >> But other religious communities don't necessarily have the same
> boundaries.
> >> They live intermingled with other religious and non-religious groups.
> >> Can I refer to the yID ghIn in Indianapolis? Despite the fact that they
> are
> >> spread out? Or the yID ghIn in general; with a global perspective?
> >
> > Again, this is all based upon impressions; feel free to ignore my
> ramblings.
> >
> > YMMV, but for me Okrand's gloss of "monastery" - no doubt the original
> prompt
> > for {ghIn} - implies a certain degree of both social and physical
> cohesion and
> > insularity, if not outright seclusion. So if you said {yID ghIn}, I
> probably
> > wouldn't understand that to mean "the Jewish religious community" in the
> more
> > general sense, since that community are, as you say, intermingled with
> various
> > other groups both socially and geographically.
> >
> > In the absence of any other data, the impression I get is that a {ghIn}
> might
> > form a kind of {nughHom} or a {lalDan nughHom}: not really substantial
> enough
> > to be a distinct culture or society, but a small unit that acts like one
> in
> > many senses, having its own established rules, interactions and mores and
> in
> > some ways separate from the {nugh} at large.
> >
> > QeS 'utlh
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>

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