tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 21 15:45:48 1997
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Re: rIntaH qep'a' loSDIch
ja' Lawrence:
>We received a new word from Marc Okrand (who was with us most of
>Saturday afternoon and evening), but I'll let Alan Anderson or another
>member of his "team" reveal it -- they're the ones responsible for it.
(Doq'a' SuvwI'pu'? ghobe' -- Doq QapwI'pu''e'!)
As the leader of the "red team", I probably should have had an official
note about this ready to send as soon as I got home. That event occurred
at 1am Monday morning, and through sheer force of will (and complete
exhaustion), I did not even enter the room where the computer sits until
after I had slept, gone to work, and then returned. I think that since
I got up last Tuesday morning, I've slept a total of 29 hours, and those
hours were not well distributed.
Anyway, as you've read by now, we requested the verb "go through", and
we provided four sentences to Marc as examples of what we meant. As it
turns out, there are at least three different concepts that fit what we
use "go through" for in English, and we had to choose the one we wanted.
The choices were "the bullet goes through the man's heart", "the hunter
goes through the forest", and "the train goes through the tunnel", with
the last one being the same idea as "the bird goes through the window."
So we asked for "the bird _goes through_ the window" and we received the
verb {vegh}. This does not apply if the window is closed, however; that
seems to be yet another concept. We unfortunately still lack a word for
"window", so we can't yet translate the example phrase that revealed to
us this new verb.
Linguistic joke department: Someone quickly complained to Marc Okrand
that he had given us a vague answer, and without a pause or blink or even
a breath, Marc immediately agreed.
-- ghunchu'wI'