tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jun 07 04:51:05 1999
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Re: Love (jIjegh!)
- From: Carleton Copeland <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Love (jIjegh!)
- Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 15:51:22 +-400
ja' qa'ral:
>>Ok, I know when to say /vav loDnI'/.
jang ghunchu'wI':
>nuqjatlh?
Only way I could think of to say *uncle*.
>>*I agree* is of course not the equivalent of *I don't disagree*,...
>Why not? Agreement is a yes/no concept, right? If you do not agree with me,
>you disagree with me. If you agree with me, you do not disagree with me. It
>is the same in Klingon, but with the root word applying to the opposite idea.
Logical--but, as others have said, Klingon ain't Vulcan, nor is English. I think you'll find you use *I agree* and *I don't disagree* in rather different situations. The latter is a qualified, hesitant, even reluctant assent. Or the speaker may be agreeing with a specific statement, while simultaneously expressing disagreement in the context of a larger argument.
>>and *You encourage me* is quite distinct from *You no longer discourage me*.
>{-Ha'} doesn't always imply "undo". Sometimes it means "do incorrectly", and
>that often makes sense translated as doing the opposite. If I mis-discourage
>someone, what I'm actually doing is encouraging him.
I was aware of the "do incorrectly" sense, but don't see the connection. *Misspeak* is not the opposite of *speak*, so I'm not sure how *mis-discourage* (in the sense of *discourage incorrectly*, whatever that means) can be equated with *encourage*. I'd still have to argue that /-Ha'/ can potentially modify verbs in three ways. Thus, /qatungHa'/ may mean, at least in theory, *I no longer discourage you*, *I discourage you incorrectly* and *I encourage you*. I suppose the latter sense would be the default setting because of its higher use value. Based on the TKD listings, this "do the opposite of" sense works with /par/ and /tung/ and may or may not with /muS/. (And /Qoch/ seems to be similarly affected by /-be'/.)
>You're making things a lot harder on yourself by not getting a copy of TKD.
>Learning the grammar (and to some extent, the vocabulary) through secondhand
>sources is giving you a slightly skewed idea of what some concepts actually mean.
teHbej. Don't give up on me, though; I'm working on it.
qa'ral