tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 24 23:39:24 1999
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Re: *Egypt* Hol navmey
qaStaHvIS poH nI' punctuation* lulo'be' tlhIngan Hol ghItlhmey 'e' vIHarmo'
jIH'e', tlhIngan Hol Hoch jabbI'IDmey vIqonDI', punctuation* vIlo'be'. qatlh DaH
vIlo'qang? laDwI'pu'vaD ngeD neH.
peHruS
Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
> >From: [email protected]
> >Date: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 18:51:17 EST
> >
> >I suspect they probably have at least commas and periods, but I doubt the
> >existence of colons. We don't use them a whole lot in English. I suspect it
> >also lacks the semicolon, the dash, the ellipsis, and the apostrophe. They
> >may have parentheses and quotation marks. As for end punctuation, they may
> >have the same mark to be equivalent to the period, the question mark, and the
> >exclamation point. Of course, all of this is pure speculation.
>
> Whatever punctuations they do (or do not) have, it's unlikely they match up
> well with the ones we know from English in any sensible way. Hell, even
> periods and commas and colons and dashes are used differently among various
> Terran languages which share them (consider German, English, French,
> Russian... all use them in subtly and not-so-subtly different ways). Would
> they have no punctuation to introduce a list? Well, why wouldn't they have
> one? Would it be the same as our colon? Not necessarily, maybe it would
> be also used in other contexts where our colon isn't. You can guess at
> some possibilities; things like syntactic breaks of various
> strengths... think of them as varying strengths of comma, semicolon, and
> period. Not necessarily equivalent, mind, nor even the same in number.
> Maybe they punctuate between sentences in SAO construction, using the same
> as they use at the ends of sentences; maybe it's a special one for that
> usage. Or maybe nothing, as the {'e'} (or {net}) serves to flag the
> sentence-join.
>
> Yes, it's all speculation. It's just as likely they use nothing, or
> something even stranger. Just that trying to say "they have period but not
> comma" is not a meaningful way to look at it. You'd do better describing
> the *functions* of the putative punctuations you're considering.
>
> ...I dunno, what we use dash for is probably pretty useful in Klingon; it's
> underused in English. Apostrophe has specialized uses in English; we
> haven't seen such in Klingon. But maybe there are (even separating verb
> prefixes from verbs!). Apostrophes have wildly varying uses even in
> Latin-alphabeted Terran languages: English uses it for possessives and
> contractions, but contractions are a lot more common and formal and even
> obligatory in French and Welsh and Gaelic. Breton actually has two letters
> in the alphabet that are written "ch" and "c'h" respectively. Some
> romanizations use apostrophe to mean ejectives, as the IPA does, or
> aspiration.
>
> Note also that many languages have managed quite happily with little or no
> punctuation. Classical Sanskrit has middle-of-verse caesura and
> end-of-verse, and something that works like an apostrophe (indicating a
> deleted letter), and manages just fine with those. It also has a *word*
> that functions a little like a spoken "unquote" mark (I am really hungry
> unquote he said). I think many Asian languages only started using
> punctuation recently, as did many Semitic languages. For something really
> interesting, ask me about the traditional Masoretic Biblical
> prosodic/musical cantillation marks, if you have an hour or so to spare.
> Actually I have an article typed up about them someplace. It's a very
> different (and in some senses more powerful) way of marking sentence
> structure to what you might be used to with just periods and commas and
> such.
>
> But let's face it, punctuation makes life a lot easier for us as students
> of the language. So don't be ashamed of doing it.
>
> ~mark