tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 15 16:31:54 1993

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Disagree

qajatlh

     I am concerned that Paul's response to a beginner's question on how to
say "I disagree with you," may be excellent fodder for a discussion among
experienced Klingon speakers, but unnecessarily confusing to the person who
asked the question in the first place. I know. This is an error I have made
myself in the recent past.

> Well, I'd think maQoch is definitely out; I definitely want "I" as the
> subject (singular first person, or whatever).

     I think maQoch is definitely NOT "out". Whether or not it satisfies the
particular subtlety you wish to add to the message, it is quite valid.
Period.

     If you wish to stress that you are the one disagreeing, you could do
something odd like:

                    jIH'e' SoH je maQoch

     If you wish to stress that the other person is causing the disagreement
or you want to make sure you are making this as personal as possible, you
could similarly say:

                    jIH SoH'e' je maQoch

> Admittedly the problem I have rarely comes up, but it comes up anyway.
> I want to express "I disagree with you" in tlhIngan Hol.  Now my question
> is whether to consider "with you" an object of "disagree" or not.  If
> "with you" can be expressed implicitly, then I'd think qaQoch would be
> good (I/you disagree), though that sounds wierd by translation.  My other
> thought would be to say SoHmo' jIQoch, which is I disagree due to you,
> or more exactly, due to you I disagree.  But then when I think about that,
> I want to consider "SoHmo'" as an object, which means I should have put
> "SoHmo' qaQoch", but by doing that I think it's redundant, and I'm back
> to square one.  So I'm saying I think there are three possibilities:

> 1.  "qaQoch":  The verb (Qoch) takes "you" as an object; implicitly saying
>                "disagree with".  Reasoning includes the fact that I don't
>                see the use of ANY objects if the verb just means "to
>                disagree".

     I think that qaQoch is valid, though I'm not sure this is really the
absolute best way to say this. We greet each other with qajatlh because
Klingon makes little distinction between direct and indirect objects.
Meanwhile, if Qoch meant "disagree with", that's probably how it would be
stated in TKD. It doesn't. It means "disagree". Maybe you would be happier
with maQochchuq? I'm not wild about it, though I think it would be within the
range of acceptable Klingon.

> 2.  "SoHmo' jIQoch":  The verb (Qoch) takes no object for prefix 
> determination and "SoHmo'" acts as a (insert correct grammar word here).

     I don't like this. Maybe:

                         vuDwIjmo' maQochqu'

     I simply think it makes much more sense to say, "Because of your
opinion, we disagree," than to say, "Because of you, I disagree." I consider
the latter to be pretty close to gibberish. More honestly, if I were to come
across it in a Klingon text, I'd scratch my head, then decide how important
it was to understand it in order to comprehend the total context, and I'd
probably skip it.

> 3.  "SoHmo' qaQoch":  The verb (Qoch) takes "you" as an object, but also
>                requires the explicit definition of how "you" affects the
>                subject.

     I don't consider this to be a great improvement. It combines what I
don't like about the first two.

> Other example words that might apply are panic (lIm) and pause (yev).  In
> English, I don't think either pause, panic, or disagree really have any
> sort of "object" associated with them.  You can't say "I panicked him" 
> (okay, maybe you can, but it's an implied "caused to panic"), and you can't
> really say "I paused him" (okay, here you REALLY can, but again, it's more
> like "caused to pause"), and you can't say "I disagreed him" (at all!).

     Check out -moH under verb suffixes (TKD 4.2.4, page 38). That should
take care of this concern.

> I guess the question is:  If it doesn't make sense directly translated, but
> has a pretty obvious derivation, is it legal?  Obviously "qaQoch" is 
> directly translated as "I disagree you", but that makes no sense.  But I 
> think it's kinda obvious that "I disagree WITH you" not only makes sense,
> but kinda fits...  So is it okay?

> ...Paul

     Okay, yes. Great, no. Using indirect objects like this is good because
it is succint, abrupt, and says a lot in very few syllables. These are all
good Klingon traits. Meanwhile, there's something to be said for clarity,
especially for beginners. The problem is that "qaQoch" doesn't really
abreviate "maQoch" the way "qajatlh" abreviates "SoHvaD jIjatlh", so you
aren't really gaining anything while you are losing clarity.

     This is not evil or horrible. It's just a darker shade of grey, In My
Ever So Humble And Probably About To Me Majorly Challenged Opinion.

--   charghwI'

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