tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Apr 23 07:32:37 1997

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Re: KLBC: Practicing with questions

According to Marian Schwartz:
> 
> ghItlh SuStel
> >There's hot debate as to whether you can say {nuq <noun>} for "which <noun>."  
> >Personally, I am dead set against it without confirmation by Marc Okrand 
> >himself.  There's always another, more Klingon way to say it, anyway.  More 
> >Klingon, because it doesn't require using lots of nouns.  Klingon is a 
> >language of verbs, use them a lot!
> 
> I agree.  But I think a good way would be {<noun>mey nuq}; "What of the
> <noun>s?"  Hypothetical, of course, and feel free to contradict me, but I feel
> it makes much more sense than {nuq <noun>}.
> Qapla'
> qoror
 
While I agree that your order is "better" than the other, I
also think sand makes better food than diseased meat. That
doesn't make me want to eat sand.

I still think this is a bad approach, inspired by the vague
range of meanings for the English word "of". It sounds awkward
in English and even moreso in Klingon. "What of the nouns" or
"the nouns' what" doesn't clearly mean "which noun?" Okrand may
choose to declare either word order correct, but in so doing,
he will effectively be expanding on the current meaning of the
word {nuq}. As that word currently has meaning, neither of
these approaches cover the meaning of the question word "which".

I have never found a question using "which" that could not be
readily recast as a command to choose, show or indicate
something. Just because it is a question in English, that
doesn't mean it is not an imperitive in Klingon. After all, the
English request, "Please buy something," becomes the Klingon
conditional statement, {bIje'be'chugh, vaj bIHegh!} The
grammatical structure of sentences expressing the same thought
in two different languages are often quite dissimilar.

charghwI'

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