tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jun 09 06:53:44 1997
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Re: leSSov/Foresight
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>Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 14:05:30 -0700 (PDT)
>From: [email protected]
>
>>"foresight" is <leSSov>
>>I guess <Hu'Sov> could mean "hindsight" but......
>
> So, "Sov" to know, and "les" days from now - could not only mean
>foresight, but could also double as a word for precognition. Are the klin
>noted for psi abilities? I am curious. I don't remember any references to
>special esp abilities in the shows.
Wait, who said anything about psi abilities or esp or anything? All that
was mentioned was foresight. You don't need to be psychic to have
foresight! A good leader routinely exercises foresight: the good,
old-fashioned kind that involves using one's wits (not necessarily arcane
mental abilities) to predict what the world's going to be like and plan
ahead. It doesn't take ESP to know to take an umbrella when the weatherman
predicts rain, but even though I know only because I heard on the news, I'd
call remembering to grab the brolly "foresight."
As to whether "Hu'Sov" would be "hindsight." Hmm. I like it and I don't.
I'm not concerned about N-V compounds, because I see "leSSov" as a
noun-noun compound, with the noun "Sov"/knowledge. The only question I
might have is that "hindsight" isn't necessarily the opposite of
"foresight." Both are idiomatic, in Klingon as well as English. Had I
seen "leSSov" anywhere but in the dictionary, I wouldn't have understood
it. That's cool; Klingon's allowed its idioms. Note that they needn't be
transparent to English-speakers. But foresight is good planning, taking
into account expected future events. Hindsight is second-guessing, a
different sort of beast altogether. Would that necessarily be ?Hu'Sov? (I
seem to recall one of the French expressions for hindsight, _l'esprit de
l'escalier_, "stairway mind." Image being those great witty comebacks you
think of on the stairs after walking away from the person you should have
delivered them to. Who'd have guessed that?) On the other hand, given a
word like "leSSov", it's awfully tempting both for us AND for putative
native Klingon-speakers to back-form "Hu'Sov" for a meaning sorta like the
flip-side of "foresight" (I don't know this, but I wouldn't be surprised if
"hindsight" in English got formed in just this way). I wouldn't be too
surprised, given the existence of leSSov, to find Hu'Sov for hindsight.
And moreover, given leSSov, I would understand Hu'Sov (I wouldn't without
it, any more than I'd understand leSSov without the dictionary).
I could definitely stand it in colloquial speech.
~mark
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