tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Feb 17 10:32:06 1996
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Klingon & Terran languages
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Klingon & Terran languages
- Date: Sat, 17 Feb 96 18:58:26 PST
On Thu, 15 Feb 1996 ~mark wrote:
>>> On that note I have proposed/considered translating
>>> "Whats up?" as {chay' bIghoS}. Literally "You do you proceed?"
>>> But feedback from others indicated that it's a bit ambigous and
>>> idiomatic.
>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?
I would assume that, since this concept is not associated with "go" terms in
all Terran languages (in Hebrew, it would be "ma nishmah?"--what's been
heard? or "ma inyanim"--what are the issues?) that we could not make any
universal assumptions.
And on the issue of Hebrew and Klingon:
>Indeed! The poster had been looking for definitions of the human
>directions, so that's what I was focussing on. But there's no reason that
>Klingons should do things the same way (we had a discussion about this a
>few weeks ago, I recall). Perhaps they indicate directions on-planet
>towards famous cities/landmarks. In Biblical Hebrew, "West" and "South"
>are often referred to as "Seaward" and "Negev-ward" respectively,
>i.e. towards the Mediterranean sea (which is west of Israel) and towards
>the Negev desert, in the south.
There is also "Kedma" for East, i.e. toward the first place [where humanity
emerged], presumably Mesapotamia, and "toward Lebanon" instead of north. But
even in Biblical Hebrew there are many instances of the more conventional
directions: "west" and "south" are used 50 times in the Bible.
One needn't look for landmark based directions in foriegn languages only.
Ask a person in Manhattan where he/she is headed, and you won't get a
north/south response, you'll get an uptown/downtown one.
Doq