tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 19 07:26:58 1997

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: some tidbits qororvo'

Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen wrote:
> qoror wrote:
> > I was using a verb suffix as a verb, because there's no word for
> > "to be afraid" or "fear."

(Poor excuse, that.  If there really were no Klingon word with that
meaning, that would imply that you're meant to make do without one,
not that you may make one up from a suffix or from whole cloth.)

> > But hey, these are soldiers! (I don't
> > think they'd stick to grammaticality.)
>
> [...] I'll take up the other issue, your implication that soldiers
> need not adhere to the rules of their language's grammar.
>
> For most native speakers of a language, the vast majority of the rules
> that apply to their language (and I'm speaking of descriptive grammars
> here, not prescriptive ones) are unconscious.

va, vay'vaD Delbogh pab ponglu', Do'Ha' 'e' tlhojbe' je Holtej chaHbebogh
ghot law'.

Unfortunately, many laymen don't even realise that there is such a thing
as descriptive grammar.

<Holchaj pab chutmey pabbej negh> bIjatlh.  <tob'egh ngoDvam> jIjang.
Qumlu'DI', reH Hol lo'lu', 'ej Hol tu'lu'DI', vaj pab pablu'.

You say that soldiers surely adhere to the rules of their language.
I say that's trivially true.  Wherever there's communication, there
is language; wherever there is language, there is grammar.

<rut chutmeyvam lubIvlu'> jatlh "tlhIngan mu'ghom".  vaj rut jaS Hol
jatlhlu'.  pabmey pIm tu'lu'.  'ach chay' pIm negh Hol pab?  pagh chay'
pIm latlhmey?  wISovbe', 'ej wIloymeH De' wIghajbe'.

It does say in _tKD_ that the rules in it are sometimes violated.
So there are different forms of the language, which have their own
grammars.  But we don't know just what the differences are, in the
case of the soldiers' slang or of any other, nor do we know enough
to be able to make a guess.

--'Iwvan

-- 
"reH Sov yInej 'ej Dap yImuS,          <dOstI bA mardom-e dAnA nEkO-st,
 jagh val qaq law' jup QIp qaq puS"     do^sman-e dAnA beh az nAdAn dOst>
                 (Sheikh Muslihuddin Abu Muhammad Abdullah Saadi Shirazi)
Ivan A Derzhanski                             <[email protected]>
H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria <http://www.math.acad.bg/~iad/>
W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences

Back to archive top level