tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 23 07:20:34 1996
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Nonexistence
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Date: Mon, 22 Jul 1996 02:16:04 -0700
>From: "A.Appleyard" <[email protected]>
>Re nonexistence, how to say "There is no dilithium in this star base.".
>{'ejyo'waw'vamDaq 'oHbe' cha'puj} "Dilithium is not at/in this star base"
>seems possible, but (given Klingon's lack of a word for "the") could also mean
>"The [specific] dilithium [that we were talking about] is not in this star
>base.".
True. But {'ejyo'waw'vamDaq cha'puj tu'be'lu'} works just fine: Dilithium
is not found at this starbase. There is none here. And if you say that
it's still prone to being "The specific dilithium," then not even a word
for "exist" will help you: {"exist"be' cha'puj} could still mean "dilithium
doesn't exist" or "the dilithium we were talking about doesn't exist."
And don't say that therefore Klingon simply MUST have a definite and
indefinite article; Russian has managed for centuries without them (and
frankly, with the possible exception of Lojban, I've never heard of a
language that actually has a sensible and understandable set of rules for
knowing when to use them).
~mark
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.4, an Emacs/PGP interface
iQB1AwUBMfTd88ppGeTJXWZ9AQGA2wL+K758rc4tV5Eee3/mdpRPRmKhV1+OeyK2
A/51k47LPfqX6FFVsElhvtwMFwNjsci1+/rnDYkhTDfBn+8D6k+p2RwcjmUg3yFs
2KttIIkBAJslbMmvqkoRXyoR/NR/5++e
=vQTi
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----