tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 28 06:35:05 1995
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Re: qeylIS betleH
>Date: Mon, 27 Nov 1995 09:25:50 -0800
>From: "Mark J. Reed" <[email protected]>
>"Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]> writes:
>\ FWIW, my personal favorite translation of "good night" is "ram yItIv".
>\ Sufficiently forceful for a Klingon... :)
>I used that up until they came out with the addendum and -jaj.
>"ram DatIvjaj" seems more appropriate . . . esp. if one is addressing a
>superior, who might look askance at an imperative directed his/her way.
Maybe. I'm leery about too-casual use of -jaj; it's an easy suffix to
misuse. However, I'll agree that it does make sense and work well here,
and this definitely does not count as misuse. Still, I'm writing this just
to take on a perception I've noticed, that commands are somehow something
bad. I think it's something to do with Western culture or something, with
emphasis on freedoms and everything, but a lot of people seem squeamish
about the idea of talking about commands and orders. Remember that Klingon
is a military society; orders are commonplace to them, taught from earliest
childhood (back when I was just a cute little walnut-head...). Nor are
commands solely the prerogative of the superior on the inferior. People of
all classes in any society are constantly asking one another to do things,
even very small social things (like, "Please move out the way"). We
generally phrase these orders in terms of requests (making them questions),
but would not a Klingon find doing that all the time akin to hiding meaning
behind phatic niceties like "nice day, isn't it?" If you want someone to
do something, tell him so. And the orderee would expect nothing less than
to be told outright what the orderer wants, superior or inferior. So, for
example, I remember suggesting (don't remember if it was accepted) in
Hamlet, when one character says "Give me good night" (i.e. wish me a good
night, I'm going to bed), that it be "ram yItIv HIra'": command me to enjoy
the night. Nothing terrible about being commanded, or even about ordering
someone to command you.
Just a thought...
~mark