tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 21 06:05:16 2014
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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Tlhingan Hol ghogh wab
You left out the excellent possibility that Klingons really don't care whether you give the digits of a date or the number of the date. They could arbitrarily say it either way and understand it, just like humans do. We call the current year "twenty fourteen" or "two thousand fourteen", and nobody has any significant arguments about which is more correct. Having a canon example of it done one way does not exclude the possibility of the other way being valid.
Feel free to say it either way. I'll understand you. Likely, so will everyone else. If it really were important to say it exclusively one way and not the other, likely Okrand would have fun telling us how ridiculous it is to do it wrong, and explain that remarkably unpleasant things would happen to any fool who said it the wrong way to a Klingon.
The only REALLY important thing is that you say {Qap-la'} and not "kaaa-plaaaaa", since the latter is like pronouncing "si vous plait" as "see vooze plate". Maybe you'll be understood, but not without eye rolling.
On Aug 21, 2014, at 6:58 AM, De'vID <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 19, 2014 at 6:15 PM, Isawo Tsukada <[email protected]> wrote:
>> toH, wa'logh QInvetlh vIleghpu' 'ach 'ay'vetlh vIlIj.
>> jIyaj. qaQochbe', qechlIj vIpabbej.
>>
>> huh? yIloS!
>> tera' poH 'oHmo' "2014"'e', lugh {cha' pagh wa' loS} vIjatlhpu'bogh,
>> qar'a'?
>>
>> tlhIngan poH vIjatlhDI' jISaH.
>
> 'ach chaq poH lughItlhDI' tlhIngan ngIq mI'Hom lughItlh 'ach poH
> lujatlhDI' mI' naQ lutogh. chaq potlh 'oHbe' Daq'e'.
>
> The examples we have are:
> - with a written Terran date, the year is written 1-9-9-4 in Klingon
> (and not written one-thousand-nine-hundred-and-ninety-four);
> - with a spoken Klingon date, the year is spoken
> eight-hundred-and-forty-six (and not spoken as eight-four-six).
>
> This could mean that:
> - Klingons write and speak Terran dates as strings of digits, but
> write and speak Klingon dates as numbers (i.e., compound cardinal
> numbers)
> - Klingons write all dates as strings of digits, but speak them all as numbers
>
> That is, we don't know if the difference is due to Terran vs. Klingon
> or written vs. spoken. Or maybe it depends on the formality of the
> context (like, in English we write 1994 and would normally say
> "nineteen ninety four", never say "one nine nine four", but in a very
> formal context might say "in the year one thousand nine hundred and
> ninety four"). And it's likely that Marc Okrand didn't think that hard
> about consistency and the relationship between written and spoken
> dates.
>
> jISovchu'be'. 'ach poH jatlhlu' 'e' 'aghbogh wa' chovnatlh wIghaj neH
> 'ej DISvaD mI' naQ toghlu' 'e' 'agh chovnatlhvam.
>
> --
> De'vID
>
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