tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jan 24 07:04:39 1995
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Re: Incompatibilities (was: Re: law'/puS)
- From: KLI Round Table Acct <klirt>
- Subject: Re: Incompatibilities (was: Re: law'/puS)
- Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 10:04:39 -0500 (EST)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> from "A.Appleyard" at Jan 24, 95 04:17:34 am
>
> > The point is that we can't accept everything as true, honest, grammatical
> > Klingon, and Okrand can only backfit to a point, without continuously
> > referring to "different Klingon dialects, slang," and so forth.
>
> It's happened, like I thought it would: we have been forced to a decision
> to pick and choose between contradictory forms, as people writing in Tolkien
> Quenya have to. I suppose that the Klingon forms which are eventually rejected
> could be explained as errors in transmission from the presumed Klingon
> original to Okrand's knowledge of them.
>
>A. Appleyard
I think you overstate the point. Part of the problem of course stems
from two vastly different sources of canonical materials: Paramount
writers who have at best little (and more typically no) linguistic
knowledge, appreciation, or insight and Marc Okrand who is doing the best
he can as he paints himself into a tighter and tighter corner.
Another important difference between our situation and that of students
of Quenya came up in a conversation a while back that I had with Carl
Hostetter (Carl is the editor of the very excellcent bimonthly journal
Vinyar Tengwar). Carl commented that unlike Quenya enthusiasts, the KLI
at least had the author of Klingon alive and available for inqueries. I
had to agree, but I countered that at least he (and the members of the
Elvish Linguistic Fellowship) had a *very* good working relationship with
the Tolkien estate and didn't have to deal with Paramount or
screenwriters who were empowered to call anything they chose to be Klingon.
The grass, as they say, is always greener in the other's yard (hmm, I
wonder how that would look in a law'/puS construction....)
Lawrence
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