tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Feb 16 15:19:14 1996

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Re: KLBC> HaDIbaHpu` l



>>Seems from the thread of many of the existing debates that a good idiom or 

>>two is just what tlhingan-Hol needs (or is it forbidden?)

>Trouble with idioms is that there's no real way to say how they should be.
>We know Klingon has idioms (ghIchwIj DabochmoHchugh, ghIchlIj qanob, etc),
>but we should expect them to be KLINGON idioms.  If we blithely model them
>on English, we're creating a code of English, not Klingon.  There's no
>reason that "go" should mean anything to do with the process of life and
>everyday experience.  It does in English (and French).  But why should it
>be the basis of an idiom in Klingon?

jIQochbe'

>From studying and speaking Italian and German, I find it indeed 
serendipitous when two Terran languages do share an idiom in direct 
translation.  I'd have to say that such occurances are the very small 
minority (< 1%?).  Like as not, idioms surely arise from the cultural 
history of a people, explaining why, even if one knows the language, one may 
not be able to decipher its idioms adequately without an understanding of 
the context.  Perhaps as the history and culture of the Klingons are 
disseminated further, we will develop the capacity to (re)construct such 
constructs.

mangHom neH jIH

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