tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jun 01 11:54:08 1997

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Fluency and the Mailing List

Scott (and others), 

I am also quite un-fluent! I definitely understand your frustration, so don't 
think you're alone here. But still, even though I have to look up 95% of the 
vocabulary and grammar I find here, I try to do that as much as I can.

Here's my method of reading this list, and I recommend it to all beginners:

1) If the message is entirely in English, I definitely read it (and still 
sometimes look up a word or two!).

2) If there is a moderate amount of tlhIngan Hol in the posting, or if 
something entirely in tlhIngan Hol is short, I try to translate it. [Be sure 
you print the New Words elsewhere on this site, otherwise you'll, like I did, 
be confused by mon - smile (v) because TKD only has mon - capital (of a place 
(n)!]

3) If a posting is a long tlhIngan Hol passage that I'm not prepared to 
translate, I skip it. If it was vitally important, it would be in English (and 

in the daily paper as well).

4) If a grammarian responds to me (or someone else) in tlhIngan Hol, I 
definitely try to translate it - no matter how long the passage is. They do 
this to beginners for the same reason we learn to swim in real water - you 
can't learn by watching, only by doing. It does no good to tell a person what 
to do - they must do for themselves. I assume people who are here love the 
language which sparked this mailing list in the first place. That's why the 
veterans of the list ask us, in fact invite us, to develop our skills to the 
point that WE will be assisting the next generation of students.

Again, as an inexperienced speaker of tlhIngan Hol, I do understand the 
nightmare of facing a page of foreign text. But as a Klingon might say, not 
qaDvo' HeD SuvwI'! (Yes - translate it!!!)

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