tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Apr 28 16:26:16 1994
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Re: DAYS OF THE WEEK, MONTHS,...
Hu'tegh! nuq ja' [email protected] jay'?
=>DAYS OF WEEK, MONTHS & SEASONS IN KLINGON
=>by G.F. Proechel
=Actually, these *are* kind of like Proechel's own little neologisms. Nick has
=his own. I prefer Nick's to Proechel's, Nick's being more grammatical. {bov
=tuj} = summer, {bov bIr} = winter. How about spring and fall? How did these
=come out?
=I might use {bIrchoHmeH bov} for fall, and {tujchoHmeH bov} for spring. These
=aren't all that illuminant. I'd accept alternatives, so long as they're
=grammatical.
Glen attacked my use of {bov} in saying that three months is too short to
be an era. I don't know; I think {poH} is too short to be three months,
and {bov} better captures the sense of 'chronological period' than does
{poH}. I may or may not be influenced by the fact that the Greek epoxi'
means both era and season...
I used to use -meH in making nouns, but I'm shying away from them now;
the -meH tends to describe the verb, not the noun. I mean, bIrchoHmeH
bov parHa' is more feasibly interpreted as "she hates the era in order to
grow cold" than "she hates the era for growing cold".
I was contemplating bov bIr choH for Spring, and bov tuj choH for autumn,
but there's little difference between that and, say, tujchoHbogh bov
and bIrchoHbogh bov, which is how I'd recast your proposals.
What is decidedly unacceptable is pum. Not only is it inappropriate to
assume verb=noun like Glen does; it's also the kind of calque [loan
translation] which guarantees you won't be able to understand Glen's
Klingon unless you already speak American English. (Note that I'm calling
this season *autumn*). I grow livid when I see such Klingon; it's an insult
to the whole point for having an alien language in the first place.
pum[[pu']ghach] can only mean "fall" as in "Humpty Dumpty had a great...".
If we're going to tolerate this kind of blind idiom lending, why, Greek
uses the same word for face and soccer (ma'pa < Italian 'mappa'; map ->
globe -> face, in Greek mainland; globe -> soccer ball -> soccer in
Cyprus). I don't see why I shouldn't stop saying "nach" and start saying
"moQQuj"! But this isn't Klingon. This is dressing English or Greek up in
Klingon clothing. It is not being serious, and isn't worth my time.
It's all the more exasperating coming from Glen, who is, after all, a
Spanish teacher. Does *Spanish* have the same word for "bIrchoHbogh bov"
and "pummeH mIw"? If not, why should Klingon?
Never mind the fact that {pum} can never be an adjective, because it is
not a stative verb. And I'm too busy to hold forth lectures on what makes
a verb stative; there are semantics textbooks for that.
Tsk. pum. Glen vIpumnIS, tlhIngan HolDaq DIvI' Hol mu'mey'e' pIj mughHa'mo'.
--
Nick.