tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Oct 20 07:59:31 1993
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Punctuation revisited
- From: (Mark E. Shoulson) [email protected]
- Subject: Punctuation revisited
- Date: Wed, 20 Oct 93 10:59:21 -0400
- In-Reply-To: Will Martin's message of Wed, 20 Oct 93 09:47:29 EDT <[email protected]>
>From: Will Martin <[email protected]>
>Date: Wed, 20 Oct 93 09:47:29 EDT
>X-Mailer: UVa PCMail 1.8.4
>Content-Length: 694
>On Oct 20, 1:14am, Jacques Guy wrote:
>> Subject: Punctuation revisited
>>
>>
>> ... or lack thereof, I know, I know. Which leads me to
>> ask: what about spaces? Spaces between words is a highly
>> idiosyncratic Terran convention, highly regional too.
>> Only some weirdo users of some weirdo languages (English, French,
>> German, Italian, Russian... you know) do it. The Thai don't
>> do it, the Burmese don't do it, the pundits seeped in Sanskrit
>> don't do it, once upon a time the ancestors of said weirdoes
>> didn't do it.... so, do the Klingons do it???
>>
>> Frogguy.
>Simple. TKD is full of the use of spaces between words. It has no
>examples of punctuation in Klingon.
Yes, though the situation apparently isn't so clear as it seems. There are
several places in which the noun-noun construction is said to be, and
written as, one word. Rokeg blood pie is "ro'qegh'Iwchab", starbase is
"'ejyo'waw'", etc. These might be exceptional, but for some reason I feel
that the distinction between noun-noun constructions and compound words is
pretty blurry.
As to the spaces, this really comes down to the same problem of "what is
pIqaD?" To what extent does our orthography reflect the "real" Klingon
writing system? We still don't know whether it's written up-down, down-up,
left-right, right-left, or all directions at once! Don't hassle me about
blanks. Just as we go easy on ourselves (or Okrand goes easy on us) by
writing the transcription in Roman characters from left to right, we (and
he) go easy on us by putting in spaces.
>-- chargwI'
~mark