tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 04 04:58:43 2011
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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Word of the Day: jaw
> > The Klingon Dictionary actually gives examples of verbs of
> saying near
> > the end of Section 6.2.5. "Sentences as objects":
> >
> > "Similarly, with verbs of saying (say, tell, ask, etc.),..."
> >
> > It's describing Klingon grammar, not English, so I'm not worried by
> > the fact that it didn't list {jatlh}, {ja'}, {tlhob}, etc.
>
> I haven't got the HolQeD article handy, but I'm pretty sure Okrand
> specifically said that {tlhob} is not a verb of saying.
>
> In any case, Okrand's examples of verbs of saying in TKD are
> in English,
> not Klingon. If he meant the Klingon words, he'd have said
> them. He was
> simply explaining what "verbs of saying" are, not listing valid ones.
=========================
WM: Do you see a division about which ones would be appropriate used
as verbs of speech?
MO: Very few. Verbs of speech are "say" verbs, like jatlh and ja'.
WM: In English, we use many of them.
MO: Yes. In English, we say, "Give me some water," he said. "Give me
some water," he pleaded. "Give me some water," he yelled.
WM: He added. He begged. He opined.
MO: Exactly. I think that's an English thing to do. That's not a Klingon
thing to do. In Klingon, you jatlh and you ja'. That's about it. The
guard asked the prisoner a question. He replied. He said, "[gestures a
quotation he never quite made]"
[After the intewiew, I made the following three lines of examples to show
how this worked:
qama' yu''avwI'. jatlh Qu'lIj DarIn'a'?
'avwI' jang qama'. jatlh tugh. vIrInmeH taj vlpoQ.
mon 'avwI'. jatlh chotojmeH bInIDchu'ta'.
Dr. Okrand modified one sentence and said he accepted them as valid but
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wanted it noted that they were my sentences and not his, in his words, "a
suggestion by you, okayed by me." - WM]
WM: So, basically, in Klingon, you would just use jatlh a lot. If someone
is asking a question, would you state the question and say jatlh?
MO: If it's a direct quotation, I would. Yes. If it's an indirect question...
How would you do indirect quotation?
WM: Is there such a beast as indirect quotation in Klingon?
MO: That's a good question.
WM: Would that be something handled with the pronoun 'e'?
MO: It could.
WM: In the example where you used that with the verb tlhob it was such
an example that because of the person and number of the subject
and object, you couldn't tell if it was a direct or indirect quotation.
Since it had the 'e' it wasn't technically a quotation at all. That was
the reason I was drawn toward the concept that it would be an
indirect quotation. It was the "I asked you command this ship..."
MO: That's not a quotation at all. That's just an "I ask you to do
something."
WM: That's kind of what I think of as an indirect quotation. "I ask you to
do that."
MO: If that's how you are defining it, that's fine. I have no problem with
that. An indirect quotation the way I'm thinking of it, I'm not sure
it is a technical term. "The person had said he would show up this
afternoon." The direct quotation would be, "The person said, "I will
show up this afternoon."
WM: You can tell the difference in that because of the difference in
person.
MO: Right. But if I'm referring to me, and I say, "The person said I will
show up this afternoon," then, which is that?
WM: Well, you have to know which you are saying. But in an example
like, "I ask you to command the ship and..."
MO: It doesn't matter again. I wouldn't call that an indirect quotation in
the way that I'm using it now. Maybe this is a clearer example of an
indirect quotation: "The warrior said the bloodwine was cold"
(which, in English, could also be "The warrior said that the
bloodwine was cold").
WM: Okay.
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MO: The way I see I see the verbs of speech, there may be more than just
ja' and jatlh, but there is only a small number of words, unlike
English. You have to use a separate sentence for the replying,
pleading, screaming. "He screamed. He said,'Come help me.'"
WM: Since a direct quotation grammatically looks like two separate
sentences, you are saying that it would now look like three separate
sentences at that point. You'd have one describing what style of
verbalization he was having, one saying "he said" and one giving
the quotation.
MO: Yes.
WM: Very interesting.
While I feel that any examples that exist deserve respect and are
certainly what we have to go by, I don't feel like you should
perpetually be bound to every utterance because you wind up with
one of two things happening. Either you become overly restricted in
your ability to use the language, or the language becomes very
confusing because there is so much splintering because everything is
equally...
MO: Well you have to remember that it is a spoken, living language.
What we say in English and what we write in English is not
necessarily the same thing. Klingon is the same way. What people
say and what people say they say is not necessarily the same thing.
There's kind of an ideal way of doing it and people have different
ideas about what is permissible and what is not permissible. Maybe
there's some old stick-in-the-mud who says "No" and someone else
says, "No, that's alright. There's nothing wrong with that."
And the course to follow for a student probably falls somewhere
between. You don't want to go too fast and loose or too far afield
because then nobody will understand what you are doing. You
won't have any rules at all. You don't want to be too rigorous,
either. It's not math.
One of the things that I think about when I read what people have
to say about Klingon sometimes is when someone argues that things
have to be one way, I think, "No, it shouldn't always be like that." It
should be like that in maybe 75% or 80% of the cases, but not
100%. Languages don't work that way. Maybe Vulcan does, I don't
know.
WM: It would be a good candidate for it.
I know that I've been, myself, more of a formalist in that my own
interest has been less in encoding English sentences into Klingon
and say, "There! It's done!" than it is to create something that, once
it is in Klingon, anyone who knows the language would then be
able to understand it well. I feel like the burden is on the person
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moving the thought into the language instead on the person who is
supposed to be able to figure out whatever it is I just said.
MO: Right.
WM: Just to mention particular verbs in terms of whether they can be
used for speech or not, you are saying that ghel is a word that
would probably not be used typically as a verb of speech. That even
if you are asking a question you would still tend to use ja' or jatlh.
MO: Yes. "He asked me. He said,'blah, blah, blah.'" Or "He said,'blah,
blah, blah.' He asked me." It doesn't matter.
WM: jang - "answer" would be similar?
MO: Yes.
WM: And tlhob would similarly be...
MO: tlhob also has the non-quoting sense.
WM: Things you would unlikely use for speech are bach, chel...
MO: bach is slang. The rules might be a little bit different. For non-
slang...
WM: chup "suggest." jach "cry out." SIV "wonder."
MO: I've got to figure out what to do about "wonder." That summer, the
more I thought about it the more confused I got.
WM: Are there any other verbs of speech that you would care to
comment on?
MO: Are there any other verbs of speech?
WM: And a typical direct object of ja' would be the person addressed and
a typical object of the verb jatlh would be the thing you say.
MO: The speech event.
WM: I like that term.
MO: Including a direct quote. I'm telling a story. He "blah, blah, blah"
jatlh.
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