tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Nov 21 08:16:51 1996
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Re: maw' Damev!
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>Date: Thu, 21 Nov 1996 06:39:50 -0800
>From: [email protected] (Orcutt, Tim)
>
>I've noticed a lot of bickering among the tlhIngan faithful about "new
>words". Unfortunately, all languages are dynamic (words like "internet "
>and "cyberspace" didn't exist just a few years back). Is there a middle
>ground? If I use the word "bomlut" in a sentence, wouldn't one be able
>figure out that I mean either "opera" or "musical"?
There is a certain amount of "middle-groundness" already. Let's consider
your "bomlut." Is it a legal, grammatical, valid Klingon word? Yes! It's
a compound of two nouns, and Okrand said that such compounding is
productive in Klingon. It is definitely grammatical. Does it mean
"opera"? This is a harder question to answer. Personally, I think it's a
fairly clear metaphor for "opera." A "bomlut" is a "song-story" (QoQlut
would also be okay). It's plainly a type of story that has to do with
song. It might be a story about songs, a story told with songs, etc. It
would seem that "opera" is a pretty promising candidate for its meaning
(especially in the right contexts). Is it "the" Klingon word for "opera"?
We don't know that. There could conceivably be another word for it (in
which case it's likely that "bomlut" would still be understood, but sound
silly or strange or childish, like you didn't know the language fully). I
tend to doubt we'll ever get a basic root for "opera" and bomlut or QoQlut
will be the choice. If I saw it in a story, I would certainly accept it,
especially with a footnote and possibly even without one. It doesn't
change any rules of Klingon or do anything we're not already told can be
done.
What you can't do is blithely invent roots (cf. the tale of 'I', which
happened once when I was trying to explain this very concept). If YOU say
that word X means "umbrella," who's to say you're right (well, Okrand). Or
to put it another way, who are you to say it's X and not Y or Z that other
people may have come up with? That way lies a fragmented language, with
each person speaking his own idiolect which is mutually unintelligible with
all the others. Sounds pretty counterproductive to me. And how is a
newcomer, with access to canon, to know about your invented words? At
least bomlut is constructed according to the rules.
~mark
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