tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Aug 27 13:26:34 1994
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Re: tlhoQ vIjangbogh
According to [email protected]:
...
> What's weird is hearing foreigners say things like " 'duckling' means
> 'entje'." But Klingon has such a totally different structure. After some
> careful thinking, I would guess that it goes like this:
>
> <nuH> luQummeH [weapon] lulo' tera'ngan?
Am I the only person who feels uneasy about using {Qum} as a
transitive verb? It seems especially ironic, coming from
someone who dares the world to show him any language other than
English which allows the same verb to be used either
transitively or intransitively. maQumlaH'a'?
...
> BTW, the reason I shy away from using {chay'} and {qatlh} (in case you hadn't
> noticed) is because "how" and "why" are such vaguely definable terms in
> English.
I suspect that if Okrand wanted to differentiate between the
two types of "how" and the two kinds of "why", he could have
easily done so in the word list. While he borrowed from many
different languages while building Klingon, I'm sure that one
of those languages was English. If English is the only language
on the planet with these ambiguous question words, then, gee,
what a wonderful way to make Klingon unique! Just use that
aspect of English, and you've made Klingon different from the
vast majority of human languages!
> Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos
charghwI'