tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Aug 22 14:08:44 1997

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: KGT exegesis (Code Switching)

( I sent this to this list already. I meant it to be my statement in this
debate, but perhaps my original label would cause it to be looked over. So...
here it is again!)

ghItlh ter'eS:
>>That's not how I understood SuStel's concern.  While I too am worried
>>about people trying to use "cute" grammar before learning how proper 
>>speech should work, appropriate use of "rhetoric" doesn't bother me. 
>>It makes me shudder to think that someone might latch onto the "suffix"
>>{?-luH} and go *looking* for a reason to use it in everyday speech, 

>Why?  Why is the grammar "cute" and why does it make you shudder? 
>There's nothing odd or cute about the use of -la'/-luH, it's a perfectly
>normal Type 5 suffix.  Only it's derivation is "unusual", but if Okrand 
>had simply said "Here's a new suffix", you'd accept it without an argument.
 
>For all, we know, the canonical suffixes had similar origins.

I don't think its value as a suffix is being questioned, but rather the
situations in which it is used. For years, we have grappled with the
intricacies of ta' Hol and now, all of the sudden we have all sorts of new
vocabulary and new "codes" such as mu'mey ghoQ and the various jargons, but
we haven't learned when such usage is appropriate.

This skill is known as code switching. A code is a form of speech used in a
certain social situation. Think about all the times you talk with your
friends, your family, your boss, your teacher, your butler, your emperor.
Think about what you hear spoken in court, on the news, in the Senate, in
schools, on the street, among children. Is the same sort of speech used in
all these situations? No!

And that's what our concern is. Not that we may use slang, or that it might
enter the language, but that we might use it without fully understanding WHEN
to use it. In foreign language classes you don't learn slang- you don't know
what cases to use it in that language. And that's why -la'/luH makes some of
us shudder... the same reason we'd shudder if the leader of our respective
countries were to start his speech to the nation: "Yo, you dig this tax
thing? Well, aint nobody gonna jive you no mo'. Its goin' DOOOOWN!" 

And how important is code switching? Well, They're still picking up the piece
of one Terran who didn't quite understand it. How 'bout a commander who uses
-neS verbs to his subordinates? The use of a dialect in front of the emperor?
Babytalk to those who have rerached the age of Ascension? All these codes are
proper in their proper situation, but in the situations given here, they can
be deadly.

That's why you must be comfortable with Klingon culture before attempting to
use them. You have to know how to use a betleH if you use them wrong.

-mu'mey pab je neH 'oH Hol'e'. tayqeq 'oH.-
-A language is not just words and grammar. It is a civilization.-

Brent Kesler
bI'reng, qetlher puqloD
-reH Hol jatlhlu'chugh, not Hegh wo'.- 

(Sidenote: I finally changed my name to fit the phonology. Story behind that
later.)

Back to archive top level