tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Mar 07 17:08:47 1997

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bIH chaH ghap



jatlh taD:
 2) <bIH> vs. <chaH>
 <bIH> refers to they, when "they" are non-speakers.  <chaH> refers to
 they, when "they" are capable of speaking. But what is used when "they"
 refers to both speakers & non-speakers?

jang SuStel:
 This is a question we've encountered before.  There is no answer yet.

jang ~mark je:
|My personal favored answer, which happens to be grammatically conservative
|but that's not why I like it, is that bIH and chaH (and similarly 'oH and
|ghaH) are simply immiscible.  There just IS NO one pronoun that can refer
|to both.  You simply have to say something like "juHDaq qetpu' HoD.  meQ
|ghaH 'oH je."  "The captain had run into the house.  He and it burned."
|That's how I'd like to see it work, anyway.  There's no reason that either
|one has to be able to "win."

FWIW, here are Okrand's definitions from MSN's Klingon Linguistic Studies: 

'oH:
  "A word to address an unnamed, or previously named, thing."
bIH:
  "A word to address a group of objects."

ghaH:
  "A word used to address a third person."
chaH:
  "A word to address a group of people, excluding those in the
  conversation."

And here is what Okrand says in TKD p. 51:
  "The pronoun chaH *they* is used when it refers to a group of
  beings capable of using language; otherwise, bIH *they* is used."

Not much help there. Hmm... I wonder which pronouns would be used for
language-capable androids like Data and Lore?  Worf, I believe, always
addressed Data--his superior officer--as "he/him" in Fed Standard, though
he may have just been copying the humans around him. 

This would be a good question for someone with an MSN.com account to post
to the Okrand BBS.


-- Voragh



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