tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 08 18:24:25 1995
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Re: jIlIH(')egh, etc.
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: jIlIH(')egh, etc.
- Date: Wed, 8 Nov 1995 21:24:29 -0500
[{ghunchu'wI' jIH} is worse...]
~mark writes:
>...I can certainly see a reluctance to identify oneself with a name (as
>opposed to identifying oneself BY a name), but that is not a grammatical
>point, but rather a matter of personal or cultural taste and style and
>perspective...
My complaint that my name is not me seems to have drowned out what
I intended to be the real point of my argument. In English, the two
phrases "My name is Alan" and "Alan is my name" are equivalent, since
"to be" indicates identity between the subject and object. But I've
always understood Klingon to have a much narrower definition of the
"to be" use of a pronoun. I'd translate my idea of the distinction
as "Alan is a name of mine" vs. "Any name of mine is Alan". Putting
the name as the object seems to go against the supposed lack of a
word for "to be" in Klingon.
-- ghunchu'wI' batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj