tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 28 10:04:45 1999
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Re: cardinal directions
>Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 23:02:38 -0700
>From: tuvel <[email protected]>
>
>ja' "Mark E. Shoulson":
>
>> >Date: Tue, 23 Nov 1999 09:28:04 -0600
>> >From: Terrence Donnelly <[email protected]>
>> >
>> >If you put <chan> at the top of your map, then the compass
>> >rose for the three cardinal points looks remarkably like the
>> >Klingon trefoil!
>>
>> I truly doubt that was a coincidence.
>>
>> Actually, I rolled my eyes at this chan/'ev/tIng thing. OK, Klingons like
>> threes, we get the picture, but that doesn't mean they're OBSSESSED with
>> the number! We like tens, but we still have four cardinal directions,
>
>I'm sure this will raise a few eyebrows, but I like the idea of tIng 'ev as
>west, 'ev chan 'ev as north (97.5 deg from east), and tIng chan tIng as south
>(262.5 deg from east.) Silly humans are obsessed with even numbers.
Well, yeah, you COULD drive yourself crazy subdividing the "quadrants" into
directions as fine as you like... but Klingons would more likely at that
point just go to degree measurements. I would think that the correct
answer to "how do you say 'North' in Klingon" would more likely be "Well,
look at the direction you REALLY want. Is it actually DUE North? Not
likely. Probably it's a little to the East or West. If it's a little to
the West, then say {'ev}. If it's a little to the East, then {chan} works
if it's okay to emphasize the Eastness. If you really want to have the
North as part of it, {'ev chan}." And so on. I really doubt they'd use the
"tertiary" forms ('ev chan 'ev, etc) very much at all. The cardinals and
the secondaries yield six (unequal) compass points, which should be plenty
for most purposes (how often do you REALLY need to talk about
east-south-east, except in very precise settings?) I can't imagine that
Klingons sit there and calculate precise degrees. Even Okrand said that
{'ev} and {tIng} are "something like" 100 degrees apart. They're *ranges*
of directions, not precise vectors.
~mark