tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 10 03:45:17 1994
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RE: salutations!!!!
>From: [email protected]
>Date: Tue, 09 Aug 94 18:48:51 EDT
>Coming soon to a theater near you(?)vaD jang charghwI':
>>> Is there a word for 'eclipse' in the Klingon lang.? Someone asked me, and
>>> I couldn't locate it in my TKD, I tried coming up with something like
>>> "shadow of the moon from the sun" or some such.. but I haven't even got a
>gra
>sp
>>> of basic Klingon structure yet... can someone give me a clue so I can give
>th
>is
>>> person an answer?
>>My guess would be:
>>ghorgh Hov'a' So'DI' maS qaSbogh wanI'
>Wrong. Too long to express such a frequently used single concept.
"Wrong"?? That's awfully strong... Is it "wrong" to say "The anniversary
of the day on which my mother bore me" instead of "birthday"? Where's the
grammatical mistake? Perhaps it's less than ideal, or un-Zipfean, but not
"wrong". A common event. Maybe. But think of all the centuries so many
Terran languages did quite happily with no word for it at all. I strongly
doubt languages of most pre-literate cultures have a word for it, and also
would make do with circumlocutions like this.
Besides, what's "too long"? I remember someone on another list complaining
about another constructed language, that it's word for "birthday" was too
long. And I pointed out that French (in full form) has no less than seven
syllables (anniversaire de naissance), and four in short form (also too
long for this guy). I've been looking over Cherokee, and the word for
"my wife" is something like six or seven syllables, at least! I bet no
Klingon would ever believe that we waste three whole syllables on a concept
as basic as "understand".
>Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos
~mark