tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Sep 17 14:23:42 1996
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Re: Star Trek Communicator (was Re: KLBC question)
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Star Trek Communicator (was Re: KLBC question)
- Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 17:20:49 -0400 ()
- Priority: NORMAL
On Tue, 10 Sep 1996 07:33:46 -0700 "Mark E. Shoulson"
<[email protected]> wrote:
Seqram vIvuvbej, 'ach jabbI'IDvam vIparqu' 'ej jIjangDI' jIyuDHa'nIS, 'ej
HoDwI' vIHubnIS.
...
> >archives <<tamey ngo'>>
>
> Excellent! Thanks very much, Glen/Ken (and of course Marc), for settling
> something I've disagreed with Krankor about for a while. I had been saying
> that "ngo'" is the opposite of "chu'" like "qan" is the opposite of "Qup."
> That is, people and living things who have lived a long time are qan, but
> an object that isn't new (or at least isn't new to someone in some aspect)
> is ngo'. It's the same difference as malnova/maljuna in Esperanto, and
> yashan/zaqen in Hebrew. I'm pretty sure Glen thought the same, as did many
> people.
>
> Krankor disagreed (perhaps due to his fresh perspective, since he doesn't
> have quite the same linguistic training as some others, and isn't hampered
> by what to "expect" to see).
This is an undeserved slam that does not deserve to go unanswered.
Mostly, it is irrelevant, since the difference between the various types
of "old" have nothing to do with "fresh perspective" or "linguistic
training" when working with a specific language. Any statistician will
tell you that if you flip a normal coin fifty times and it comes up heads
every time, on the fifty-first flip, the odds are exactly 50/50 that it
will be heads or tails. Especially with a fictitious language built by
someone trying to be as alien as he can within practical constraints,
applying generalizations from other languages is very nearly useless,
since it all comes down to what mood Marc Okrand is in when he faces this
particular point. Of all people, I did not expect ~Mark to come at
something from this angle.
Was Okrand tired and decided just to let this be like other languages?
Was he mischevious and wanted to make this an arbitrary exception (like
the color breakdown)? Was he too busy and decided not to make a decision
at this point? Until we hear from him or get indisputable examples or
description, we can't tell if a generalization is applicable or not.
> He believed that "qan" meant "old" just as in
> English: for people and things alike, being the opposite of both chu' and
> Qup. (See his "exam" story in HolQeD, in which he refered to "nav qan" for
> "old paper.") As for "ngo'", he said it meant "old" in the sense of
> *former* (as in the old president, not to be confused withthe current
> one). It's not the "new" one, but the one that was there before. Me, I
> didn't buy it, but I had no canon.
Meanwhile, I see the two interpretations as being arbitrary, with only
one potential source of confirmation.
> Now I have. Calling archives "former records" doesn't make much sense
> (unless you mean that when something happens, it's first recorded as a
> record, and then sometime later becomes something else, while more recent
> events become records, and the older ones become "former records"; this is
> really a stretch). But "old records" is quite logical for archives; that's
> what they are.
It's not a stretch at all. Archives are processed records, hence the
verb "to archive". Archives rarely exist in their original form. Database
archives are separated from the live data, usually processed for a
different search engine than the live data. Paper archives take
individual sheets of paper which have been handled as individual sheets
and has them bound and sorted on shelves separate from the current
records. Our own messages for this list are processed to form the archive
used to aid in searches. The archive and the current records or messages
are not the same thing.
They are like the living layer of a tree and its wood. One is constantly
transformed into the other, monodirectionally, but the archive is
fundamentally different from the current record, much in the way that the
current president is fundamentally different from former presidents. The
same could be said for empirors, of course, but the fundamental
difference among empirors has to do with pulse rates, in that the pulse
rate of the current empiror is greater than zero...
> Sorry, Krankor. That's the way the qagh wiggles. Now to break the news to
> him gently...
wejpuH. ngoDqoqmo' lughbej ghaH 'e' Har qoH. pagh Datob 'ej
batlhHa' HoDwI' DatIch. bIDojbe'.
...
> >trivia <<ngoDHommey>> ** ILS use to use Dochmey ram,
{Dochmey ram} only works if you accept the use of {Doch} for abstract
"things" like ideas or facts. I don't know that this is acceptable
practice. {ngoDHommey} makes MUCH more sense to me.
> Thanks for the list, Ken!
>
> ~mark
charghwI'