tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Sep 15 09:37:05 1997
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Re: Ha'DIbaHmey
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>Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 21:44:21 -0700 (PDT)
>From: "Neal Schermerhorn" <[email protected]>
>
>ghItlh SuStel:
>
>>Not really so surely. There's been a lot of debate on that point. Can
>>question words be used in this way? Could you say {'Iv tlhIngan Ha'DIbaH}>for
>>"whose Klingon animal"? If so, shouldn't you also be able to say {SoH
>>tlhIngan Ha'DIbaH} for "your Klingon animal"?
>
>Excellent point. Just because question words tend to fall into positions
>which mirror their 'replaced' counterparts doesn't mean that we can replace
>any noun with nuq, or any name with 'Iv. tlhIngan nuq can only mean, as far
>as canon I've seen, "What is a Klingon?". tIn tlhIngan nuq would not be
>"The Klingon's 'what' is big?" - we just don't have canon to support that
>usage. Could I say My 'what' is burning? as meQtaH nuqwI'???? I don't think
>so at all.
Well, {nuqwIj} would make more sense.
I agree that it doesn't sound right to me. Similarly, "My what is
burning?" is also not strictly speaking formal English. Put that in a
newspaper article and the editor will throw it back in your face; write it
in a book-report and your sixth-grade teacher will put a big red circle
around it. I'd expect much the same for the Klingon construction (though
of course we don't know for sure, and just because English views it one way
doesn't mean Klingon will). On the other hand, if you said it to me, in
casual conversation, especially with appropriate intonation and gestures,
I'm sure I'd understand it. That doesn't make it correct, but tolerable in
colloquial circumstances.
I remember we had something like this in the "Who's on First?" sketch at
the qep'a'. When I looked at the script the first time, I told Krankor
he'd have to change some of the lines, since we had just learned about the
use of no-object prefixes with direct quotations (and he'd been using
quotations as the objects of the verbs all along, and had written it so,
not having heard yet). He changed the script (and warned me that that
wording would likely give him a lot of trouble when reciting it, since he
was so used to it the other way), and also asked "But how might I say, 'I
said WHAT??'?" (Such a construction does show up in the sketch: "If I said
the third-baseman's name, who did I say was playing third?" "Who is on
*first*!"...) I didn't have an answer, and when it comes down to it we
don't consider that formal English either. There was a little playing fast
and loose with the grammar in the sketch, for simplicity and to make the
jokes work, but just about all of it was believable as slang speech (as the
lines are intended anyway). I myself might have done them a little
differently (one or two places I did do differently, since I couldn't bring
myself to mangle the grammar as the line was written), but on the whole it
was pretty natural.
OBTW. I don't know what arrangements will be made regarding making this
available, but I DO know that Krankor and I made a recording of the skit a
few weeks later. He has the tape, though.
~mark
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