tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 24 13:42:31 1995
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Re: Re:}}}Colors (again)
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Re:}}}Colors (again)
- Date: Mon, 24 Jul 1995 13:42:31 -0400
>Date: Mon, 24 Jul 1995 09:38:38 -0400 (EDT)
>From: "Elizabeth C. Hoyt" <[email protected]>
>ghItlh ~mark:
>> *giigle* under what circumstances should we consider it "yIHoj" and under
>> what circumstances "peHoj"? :) I suppose it depends on the point-of-view
>> we're dealing with.
>AAgggghhhhhh! don't do this! ;)
>Maybe {pe-} would be right, because the light is "talking" to everyone in
>that lane, but for some reason {yI-} *looks* better to me, maybe I just
>like the sound.
Hee....
That's precisely why I did it. "yI-" is so overpoweringly the most common
imperative prefix that it's becoming pretty common to forget that it's just
*a* prefix (Most people seem okay with remembering to use "HI-" or
occasionally "gho-", but I see MANY errors with pe- and tI-). There's
nothing about yI- that makes it the be-all and end-all imperative prefix.
It's sloppy thinking like that that made some people suggest blindly using
"yI-" for a putative first-person imperative in Klingon, simply filling in
the subject place with a first-person pronoun. They were thinking "Well,
'yI-' is just general-purpose imperative, so we simply define who's doing
it, right?" NO! "yI-" is imperative for very specific areas
(second-person singular subject/no object or second-person singular or
plural subject/third-person singular object); that kind of logic is like
saying "I can say "I see you" by doing "SoH legh jIH"". Don't think
"imperative=yI-". Be aware of the other imperative prefixes.
I must say, though, that your plan still works. It just is a little finer.
The traffic light might command "pemev!" in general, to all the drivers,
but if you're talking about a single driver under consideration, you may
have need to say that the light told *that driver* to stop. OK, it told
other ones too, but I'm not talking about them.
But don't think that yI- "sounds" better or more imperative, just because
you see it more.
~mark