tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Mar 01 08:38:04 1999
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
RE: Dap naQ
> But, did your reader leave off the introduction to this nonsense? Right at
> the top of the posting I had said that this was to be nonsense with the
> purpose of pointing out that simply taking words at "face value" from the
> dictionary leads to this kind of problems. Every mistake
> here is deliberate.
No, my reader did not leave off any of the message. Which is why, at the bottom of my
post, I said:
> peHruS, you *started* by admitting (in your home or elsewhere) that you were
> doing things that were unusual or unattested.
(The "in your home or elsewhere" part was a reference to the odd {juHwIjDaq jIchIDpu'}
which was just above this in my post.) Sometimes I get the feeling that you don't read
everything before making a reply.
> I do not blame you for not wanting to read further. You got
> the point without finishing the nonsense.
I got the point before I even started on the Klingon. *My* point is that noone, except
for you perhaps, would try to use the lexicon the way you have twisted it. There is
marvelous ambiguity in Klingon as it is, without having to be perverse in our
interpretations. Here's an example. charghwI' recently pointed out in another forum the
different interpretations of {pIH} "be suspicious." In English, we can use this to mean
someone is doing something suspicious or that someone thinks something *else* is
suspicous. Picture a detective and a suspect looking at each other. They both might say,
"he looks suspicious" to describe the other person, with completely different meanings.
Does the Klingon {pIH} include both of these meanings, or just one, and if just one, which
one? Without usage, we don't know.
That's nothing like using {jotlh} for "taking down" an opponent. By recognizing this
misuse, what have we learned about Klingon? Nothing. By recognizing the ambiguity of
{pIH}, what have we learned about Klingon? At least, that the meaning of {pIH} isn't
clear. If we can get some demonstrated usage for {pIH}, we will have a clearer
understanding of Klingon, and expanded our abilities to use the language for clear
communication. This is why, I believe, ghunchu'wI' described your intentions as "evil,"
because they seem to serve no real purpose. There's about a zero chance that someone
would mis-use or mis-interpret {jotlh} or {qet} or {per} and so on, other than these
schizophrenic musings of yours.
Is there a single mis-used word in your "utter nonsense" that you believe contains real
ambiguity, such that pointing it out will further our goals of communicating clearly with
this language? If there is, perhaps I didn't read far enough to discover it. When
charghwI' writes in Klingon, he takes great care to write well-formed sentences that
clearly describe his ideas using the available tools of the language. I'd venture to say
that he is a *master* at doing this. This is why, when he points out something that is
vague, mis-used, or plain impossible to say clearly in Klingon (such as with {'arlogh}),
we pay attention. We don't just accept it blanketly, we discuss it, we work with it.
People offer alternatives, we banter them around. It's not for naught, it's to help us
figure out how to best use the tools to communicate clearly. This is decidedly NOT what
your {Dap naQ} is about. You showed us that Klingon words can be mis-used based on
English idioms, a process that generates Klingon text which is very painful to read.
Other than pointing out that it's possible to do this, there doesn't seem to be any
purpose, specifically any purpose relating to improving our ability to communicate
clearly, to this task.
I'm writing all this out, hopefully to offer some explanation as to why people seem so
frustrated when you do stuff like this. It can sometimes be hard to separate the man from
the message, and when we criticize (sometimes harshly) the message, it can easily seem
like or turn into a criticism of the man. ASCII doesn't communicate emotion, and terse
posts can easily be misinterpreted. When ghunchu'wI' writes {ghIlab ghew SoH}, (and I
present here my interpretation), he's not trying to be personally insulting, but to point
out that your posts neither communicate clearly nor develop our understanding. It's a
perfect metaphor in Klingon style, to indicate that there's little perceived value in your
posts, and that he will pay no heed to them.
If your only goal, {DuDwI'}, is to mix things up, then {ghIlab ghew SoH}. If you want to
come into the fold, then either try to communicate clearly, or offer observations that
will serve to further our ability to use Klingon to communicate clearly.
> peHruS
-- Holtej 'utlh