tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri May 17 12:22:44 1996
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Re: Re[2]: Beginner's questions
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>Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 13:17:02 -0700
>From: "Mark J. Reed" <[email protected]>
>[email protected] (Frank M Truelove) writes:
>If you use the LaTeX typesetting program, there is a free
>MetaFont version of the KLI font, written by ~mark, also available from
>the KLI home page.
Spooky; I think I found the font on a Linux distribution CD.
>As far as the language being static: there are two schools of
>thought.
>1. We are the speakers of the Klingon language; we *are* the
> language community, therefore whatever we do defines the
> language.
>2. We are students of a foreign language of which no native
> speakers are directly available, but we have an observer in
> the field (Okrand) who once in a while provides us with new source
> material.
>The latter position is the more widely accepted, and is, I do belive,
>the official stance of the KLI. But even if we were all to adopt the
>former position, one couldn't go around adding words to the language
>willy-nilly. One could propose a word, people might start using it,
>and when more people were using it than weren't, it could be considered part of
>the language. (One also has to be careful with that "we, the language
>community". Who's "we"? The subscribers to this email list? KLI
>members? The union of the two sets? The intersection? What about
>others who have picked up TKD and studied it but not yet heard of
>either the list or the KLI?)
Yes, I'd say the latter position is what I see the KLI as saying too (I
don't determine KLI policy either). It may be a little more severe than
I'd like... I'd think we DO have an impact and an influence on what happens
to the language, but we still can be overridden by Okrand.
And there is good reason why there should be some sort of structure, as you
mention. If we decide "Well, we're the speakers, what we say goes," who's
we? If each of us can invent rules as we go along, the language becomes
splintered into a thousand dialects (idiolects, really) which may have
totally different rules and words. Look at some of the beginning posts
from people who are just barely starting with the language. Can we say
that all these must be right? If we do, what do we have left that we can
call tlhIngan Hol?
~mark
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