tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Sep 20 20:28:27 1997

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



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

wagh Qagh



[{pagh wagh Sagh Qagh wagh Dogh} "Nothing costs more than an error."]

Tad Stauffer writes:
>  To me, the phrase is merely (intentionally) ambiguous - using the "law'/puS
>construction without the law'/puS", translated it would be something like,
>"Nothing's expensiveness is many, an error's expensiveness is few."  This
>could mean "There is nothing is more expensive than an error," indicating
>that an error is the most costly act of all.  Or it could be translated  as
>you said,  "A mistake costs less than nothing does."

Please try to disgregard the English idiom "nothing is more expensive than",
and look at the meaning of the sentence in Klingon.  The {law'/puS} phrase
doesn't seem ambiguous at all; it quite clearly says to me that the error
has the lesser expense.

Look back at the first English meaning you're considering.  It's obviously
missing a word.  I think it needs a relative pronoun:
"There is nothing *which* is more expensive than an error."
I'm absolutely certain that your Klingon phrase doesn't carry this meaning.
That's a shame; it's a *very* clever sentence, otherwise.

-- ghunchu'wI'




Back to archive top level