tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jan 15 07:00:48 1997
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Re: chay'
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Regarding "how tall is the building", I keep thinking of how other
languages, and particularly Hebrew, might handle it, in an attempt to see
just how much languages seem to feel the *need* to say such things.
Maybe I'm just out of practice with Hebrew, and need a couple of minutes of
steady conversation to get back into the mind-set, but I can't think of any
good general way to express this question in Hebrew. For "How tall is the
building" I keep thinking "mah govahh habinyan?" which means "What is the
height of the building?" For "how fast are we travelling?" I think stuff
like "what is our speed?" (which can be translated into Klingon quite wel;l
as nuq 'oH Domaj'e'?, though it's rather noun-centric) or constructions
like "At which speed are we travelling?" And for "how red is the
book?"... I can't really think of *any* way to translate that neatly in
Hebrew. I may just be out of the right mindset: loDDoq, do you think you
can answer this for me? How would you ask these questions?
Now, what relevance has this to Klingon? Klingon isn't Hebrew. No, it
isn't. But I do agree that it is important and useful to see what other
languages do, not as proof of what Klingon must do to follow along, but as
ways of exploring the possible options of what Klingon *might* do. If it
turns out there really is no simple way to ask "how red is the book?" in
Hebrew, that would demonstrate that it's possible for a language to get by
without such a construction. And thus that *perhaps* there is no way in
Klingon either. Not a proof, but an indication of possibility.
~mark
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