tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jun 29 02:34:27 1997
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Re: KLBC story: puyjaq &c.
Robyn Stewart wrote:
> At 07:44 PM 6/28/97 -0700, SuStel wrote:
> >[email protected] on behalf of Qov wrote:
> >> At 10:10 AM 6/28/97 -0700, SuStel wrote:
> >> >he responded to Qov's story and she wrote back:
>
> SuStel>Does everyone WANT me to be only a grammar-checker? If you
> say a
> >sentence which is grammatical, but which doesn't make sense with the
> rest of
> >the story, do you want me to keep quiet?
>
> If it doesn't make sense with the rest of the story, I want to know.
> If it
> doesn't make sense with the body of Star Trek episodes I have never
> seen,
> (mostly everything since 1991) then it will confuse me.
>
> >interlinked. If you believe that Klingons wear smiley-face T-shirts
> and sing
> >"Don't Worry, Be Happy," then I can show you how to translate things
> like
> >"Have a nice day," but that's just not how the language is used! It
> wasn't
> >designed for that, and so you're saying grammatically correct
> nonsense.
>
> In a story, Klingons can wear purple fingernail polish and go to
> flower
> arranging classes. That's what fiction is about. But as the practice
> of
> this forum appears to be otherwise. I will no longer write stories
> about
> Klingons. I don't watch the shows, so I don't know what the Klingons
> are
> supposed to do, how fast their ships are supposed to go, how they
> catalogue
> their stars. I will write stories about Bemorians (bemornganpu'), who
>
> have
> the culture, physics and society that you will see in my stories.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------this
extract from a reply to one of my efforts.> yItIv jajvam
Er . . . you just commanded the day to enjoy something. Imperatives
also
follow the standard subject order, though the subject is always {SoH} or
{tlhIH}. If you want to tell someone to "enjoy this day," it's
jajvam yItIv
Be warned, however, that Klingons do not say such things. If you speak
like
that, you're bound to be marked as a tourist with no taste!
--
SuStel
Beginners' Grammarian
>
I believe that for the sake of learning a language (something which I
have done several times) that using words in sentences that are
grammatically correct is worthwhile. You may never use 'La plume de ma
tante est sur le bureau de mon oncle' but you will have learnt a
valuable lesson about sentence structure (and quite possibly about
pronunciation) from it. It all helps to build knowledge of the grammar
and a varied (some chance you have with Klingon) vocabulary which in
turn increases interest in the language. After you have enough knowledge
to stop using KLBC then consider the cultural aspects more importantly :
say "the honour of the Klingons will never die" instead of "have a nice
day" by all means but everyone must learn to walk before they learn to
run : don't make anything more difficult than it needs to be or people
will think that you're a public servant.
cha'wIgh