tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 09 10:48:57 1996

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

RE: with, around, using; in an X manner


Anthony,

It's been, if I recall correctly, about 2 years since you joined us on this 
list.   At that time, you were asking things almost exactly like you ask us 
here now.  Using /tlhej/ as a suffix, indeed.  wejpuH.  The answer is, you 
can't, because it's not a suffix, it's a verb.  C'mon, Anthony, if you have 
something you want to say in Klingon, then learn how to use the tools of 
the language to say it.  Don't try to twist the language around to suit 
your needs.  One of the charms of Klingon is learning how to use the 
limited grammatical and lexical tools to express oneself.  If you take 
shortcuts, you're cheating yourself of the real prize.

> I was told off for it; but it seems a
> natural end-point of language evolution

Natural language evolution, perhaps.  But I'd rather think of Klingon as a 
language for which we have incomplete information, and about which more 
information will become available over time.  Not one for which we are 
establishing an isolated community of speakers.  Somewhat akin to Latin: 
many people study it, some even learn to speak it.  But noone would presume 
to extend it, because it seemed "natural."  What seems natural to your 
Terran mind might be complete at odds with a Klingon's mind.

>   How can I use any randonly chosen adjectival verb, or other verb, as an
> adverb? E.g. "he wrote in a drunk manner": {chechZ ghItlhpu'}, where {Z} 
means
> the same as English "-ly" or French "-ement"; but what is {Z}?

Simple.  You can't.  It's not a part of the grammar of Klingon we know. 
 There's no such creature {Z} in Klingon.  I think you got the same answer 
from us a couple of years ago.

On the other hand, given some context, how can you express the meaning 
you're looking for?

     ghItlhtaHvIS chechwI' rur ghaH

When it comes to brilliant recastings, I tend to look to charghwI' as the 
epitome of creativity while capturing the nature and spirit of being 
Klingon.

>   Forming Klingon placenames. {X Daq} or {XDaq} = "at the X" or "the 
place of
> X" (compare the Nahuatl (Aztec) placenames {Teno~chtitla~n} [= Mexico 
City] =
> "among the rock prickly pears" and {Chapoltepe~c} [= Chapultepec] = "at 
the
> grasshopper hill" (~ = long vowel)). Thus {wej woj choHwi' Daq} = "at the 
3
> (nuclear) reactors" or "the place of 3 reactors" (I think):

With you so far...

> and as a placename
> the parts would tend to cohere: {wejwojchoHwi'Daq}.

Bzzzt.  Thank you for playing.  Klingon doesn't work this way.  And you 
know it.  You can't combine numbers and nouns this way; reactor is /woj 
choHwI'/ and not /wojchoHwI'/.  There's no known grammar of Klingon that 
will generate */wejwojchoHwI'Daq/.

>Also to be expected are
> e.g. {ngem bIng} or {ngembIng} = "the place or area under [here = 
downhill
> from] the wood, Underwood" and {waw' Dung} or {waw'Dung} = "the place or 
area
> above the base".

Would that be "overbase"?  Okay, these constructions aren't so far-fetched, 
since we have methods for creating compound nouns in Klingon.  But the 
question of how to interpret them is one that's never been satisfactorily 
resolved.  ghunchu'wI' and I debated this for a while, and we agreed (I 
think) that although we each have our own interpretations, there really 
isn't any understood way to interpret them.  It's a grammatical tool which 
generates forms that we really don't know how to interpret.  We can guess, 
as long as we admit that we're just guessing.  So would it be "overbase"? 
 "Base's over"?  "Base-over"?  Who knows?  And what do these mean?  If you 
tell me it's a name, and it means "overbase" to you, then I'll quietly 
observe that names are unusual creatures, and accept your interpretation. 
 But if you try to extrapolate a general rule to inject into Klingon 
grammar from constructions like this, then I'll start complaining again.

So, the question becomes, what would someone make of /ngembIng/?  I 
certainly wouldn't come up with "Underwood", especially not just seeing the 
word in isolation, without context.  Would you?  Or, more to the point, 
would Maltz?

> If so, given a place named {XYZDaq}, how far along the scale
> between correct and incorrect would be the form {XYZ DaqDaq} or 
{XYZDaqDaq} =
> "at the place which people name XYZDaq"?

I think you could argue that they are grammatically correct, but there's no 
explanation of how to interpret forms like this.  We can guess, we can look 
at how other forms which we're given in TKD are translated.  But we've been 
down this path, and intelligent, skilled speakers of the language still 
disagree.

Welcome back, Anthony.

--Holtej

Back to archive top level