tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jul 26 21:58:33 1996
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Re: translating and gaps in vocabulary
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: translating and gaps in vocabulary
- Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 00:02:56 -0500
A.Appleyard writes:
> [email protected] wrote (Subject: batlh DaqawIu'taH):-
> (0) His `I' (letter eye) should be `l' (letter ell): shows again that
>permission to write `i' for `I' would help legibility!
That's not obvious in this case, where a lowercase ell was mistaken for an
uppercase eye. Permission to use lowercase eye wouldn't make a difference.
>...E.g. there
>is no word so far for "dive" or "swim", and to unambiguously say "scuba diver"
>recently I had to say {bIQ bIng tlhuHwI' lo'wI'} = "water under breathe-er
>use-er", 6 syllables; for practical use a shorter word for "underwater
>breathing set" and/or "scuba diver" is needed.
How ironic that you should choose an example which requires more syllables
to express in english than it does in Klingon! "SCUBA" is an acronym which
was coined only recently, and it takes the place of *thirteen* syllables.
I'm not sure your use of {-wI'} works here, though. {tlhuHwI'} is a thing
or person that breathes, not something which permits one to breathe. I'd
probably say {bIQDaq tlhuHlu'meH luch} "gear for one to breathe in water".
> (2) We need separate suffixes for instrument and agent. E.g. if {X} is a
>verb = "he scuba dives", {XwI'} could mean (a) a scuba diver and also (b) his
>breathing set.
No, I don't think it could mean (b). {-wI'} doesn't carry an "instrumental"
meaning in my book, only an "agent" meaning. To give an instrumental meaning
in Klingon, I use the noun as the object of the verb {lo'} "use".
> (3) We need a short word for "chemical element".
I too think this sounds like a Vulcan concept. Elements have names; just
say "tungsten" if you want to refer to tungsten. (Unless of course you want
to call it Wolfram.) We will eventually find the historic Klingon names for
various elements (oxygen and nitrogen are first on the list, I believe).
> (4) Excuse the hyphens: but how else to distinguish e.g. {Duj-loS pu'mey} =
>"Ship #4's phasers" from {Duj loS-pu'mey} = "4 phasers belonging to the ship"?
Standard answer: from other context. Give a "real-world" example of why
you might be confused, and I'm certain the confusion can be removed easily.
-- ghunchu'wI' batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj