tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Apr 07 13:20:16 1994
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{Hech}
ghItlh Qanqor:
>Sorry, d00d, you lose. You have an irksome tendency to treat your own
>personal micro-reading of Okrand's frustratingly-minimal definitions as
>gospel truth. This one is *certainly* far from unambiguous, and indeed,
>the very meaning of "intend" could well be construed as "good enough".
>"word X intends meaning Y"-- why not?
>Now, let me state clearly that *I personally agree with you*, that it's
>kind of a reach and not a great translation. Since the first time you
>brought this up, I have agreed with you as for as my own interpretation,
>and have stopped using Hech in this way. BUT: That is a far cry from
>establishing it as definite law, it is still up for debate and
>interpretation, and in particular, NOBODY can be called "wrong" for using
>it in this way-- *especially* not people on the beginners conv (which I'm
>pretty sure the original usage was from). It is absolutely NOT the job of
>the Grammarians to enforce specific readings of clearly ambiguous
word definitions.
I suppose in this case, we have no license to correct. But then, charghwI'
writes:
> Well. It's a bit of a stretch because even the definition says "mean
>to", not "mean". {<<puq>> Hech "child"}. That sentence would mean "'Child'
>means to <<puq>>," which doesn't make any sense. Just because one of the two
>words/phrases in the definition contains the word "mean" doesn't mean that
it
>means mean. (Heh). Even if we don't come out strongly and tell someone they
>are wrong for using {Hech} in this way, I think we should at least warn them
>that it is really not very good form.
Excellent point.
> Anyway, this is just a suggestion as a tool to assist in the subjective
>decisions surrounding ambiguous words. If you look up a word in both the
>English-Klingon and Klingon-English sides of the dictionary, sometimes you
>can come to at least minor revellations about these words. It becomes
>accumulatively interesting if you retype the entire dictionary, as only a
>foolish few of us have done...
[...]
>definitions in the English-Klingon side. Whether the reward of this
>perspective justifies the hours I've spent at the keyboard is another matter
>altogether...
Recopying the Klingon lexicon is tedious, but often quite helpful. I have
done this great task only once, and that was before I had even joined the
KLI. Aside from the fact that an annotated lexicon list will keep you from
having to look up things twice (in the main body and the addendum of TKD) and
then possibly checking a few of the HolQeD word lists of items from the tapes
of other canon, it is also helpful in memorizing. Every time you go thru the
entire lexicon, a few new words stick with you. An exercise that a student
might try is to read thru the entire dictionary section of TKD. This sounds
crazy, but it's quite useful. Ok. I'm done now. ---
Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos