tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Dec 09 16:36:13 1999
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RE: jang. ja' <blah, blah, blah>
- From: "Andeen, Eric" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: jang. ja' <blah, blah, blah>
- Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 17:37:37 -0700
jIja':
> When I say <jang vay':> in a message, I don't mean
> "Someone answered the following", I just mean
> "someone answered". I've also used quote lines like
> <mu' <veb> qel charghwI', ghunchu'wI' je:> or <ghoH
> DoghwI'pu':>. The point of the sentence is *NOT*
> that the quote is its object; it just describes the quote
> that follows and (most importantly) attributes it to
> whoever wrote it in the first place.
jang charghwI'. ja':
> That's an interesting interpretation. It doesn't have anything
> to do with what Okrand told me during our interview, but I can
> see how you arrived at that conclusion. The point I think pagh
> misses here is that while there is no grammatical link between
> the quotation and the verb of speech, there is a formal
> convention where there is always a verb of speech, almost
> exclusively {ja'} or {jatlh} which appears before or after any
> direct quote. Other verbs describing the type of speech may
> accompany that verb of speech as a separate sentence (we might
> punctuate with a semicolon) to add a description of what style
> of speech was occurring.
And I am just not following that convention. Perhaps I should be, at least
as long as I am BG, to avoid confusion.
> Meanwhile, just because, in English, you like to use different
> verbs of speech while describing lengthy dialog and you may
> think that this is, in English, a good style point, that is all
> meaningless when you are using direct quotes in Klingon.
reH lugh charghwI'.
> We may choose to use all kinds of notation with colons or
> whatever else while we write to this list, much like play
> scripts do, where there is only some form of identification of
> who is speaking what, but no speaking verb whatsoever, or we can
> do all kinds of other things here WHICH HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH
> THE CONVENTIONS OF SPEAKING KLINGON, but what we CAN'T do is
> declare that in ta' Hol, when you are quoting what someone else
> has said, you can use other verbs besides {ja'} or {jatlh} and
> have any certainty whatsoever that you are speaking Klingon well.
The conventions of an email list or newsgroup are much more specific than
the language used to write the messages (except maybe on aanvvv, where the
convention *is* the language).
> > toH! Then "jIjang: <blah, blah, blah>" works as well as
> > "jIjang. jIja' <blah, blah, blah>"? What a relief! And
> > is "<blah, blah, blah> jIjang" kosher too?
>
> Neither one is kosher. You can do it, but it won't be right.
> Some may complain, but you can ignore them, or nobody may
> complain, but it still won't be right. The only way to know that
> you are speaking Klingon quotations correctly is to use the
> verbs {ja'} or {jatlh}. Okrand has made this quite clear in that
> interview. While interviewing him, I was suprised by this
> statement and I wanted to open up any door for exceptions, but
> with body language and vocal inflection and everything else,
> Okrand made it clear that, while he had previously published a
> few exceptions to what he now wanted to be a rule, he definitely
> favored the use of only two verbs (leaving himself wiggle room
> to change his mind later) for this purpose.
>
> yaj'a'?
Reading the interview makes it pretty clear as well.
pagh