tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 23 16:46:21 1999
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Re: qama'
In a message dated 2/22/1999 12:20:30 PM US Mountain Standard Time,
[email protected] writes:
<< qama' yIngu'.
You consider that to be convoluted?
I requested {'arlogh} or its equivalent because there was a real
hole in the language. Others agreed. I asked for ways around the
lack of it and nobody came up with anything. I could not come up
with anything. It was a yearning in the language. I was not even
the person who came up with {'arlogh}. I don't remember who did.
It is actually not important who did. The point is the language
itself is better off with it. >>
I consider {qama' yIngu'} to be inadequate and unfulfilled. Which prisoner
shall I identify? Although contrived and not of MO's origin, {'arDIch} would
settle the confusion left by your sentence. It would ask that the respondent
tell which numbered prisoner is to be identified.
Although it is not a word, I hope MO comes up with the right word for the
concept. I want the concept unambiguously answered much more than I want to
invent to word which would fill in the hole.
Is any language better off without words which disambiguate a concept.
Perhaps so. Our dictionaries are filled with duplicate words for the same
meaning. We don't need both. We don't need technical terminology AND street
language. Or, do we?
OTOH, primitive languages grow when having come into contact with languages
which have concepts not yet covered by words in the native tongues. If a
language needs to express something, its people find a way.
Warning: Although we are the Klingon language's people (except for those
fanatics who firmly believe that there is an Empire of rough-ridged peoples on
the planet Kronos somewhere out there past Deneb), we are following the
language solely as a creation of MO. So, even though we discuss how to fill
the holes, we don't make up words. This is true for me, too. I stir up the
pot to probe for the correct answers.
peHruS