tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 03 04:52:23 2000

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RE: obtuse question



ja' charghwI':
>So, do you consider your wife to be vintage 1983? In English, we don't talk
>about spouses and age with the same phrases we talk about wine and age. Why
>do you assume that Klingon would be more consistent about this than we are
>in English?

I certainly hear people say things like "my wife of four years".  It seems
perfectly natural for me to render that in Klingon as {loS ben be'nalwI'},
especially with the Saurian brandy precedent showing that {ben} doesn't
*have* to be restricted to acting as a sentence time stamp.

>...[cha' ben loD]...
>How do you know that it would not mean "two years since he completed his
>Rite of Ascension?" After all, at two years old, you would not call him
>{loD}. You'd call him {puq}.

jIQoch.  {loD} doesn't imply maturity.  {loD nen} does.  TKW 177:  {wa' jaj
'uchchoHlaH tlhIngan puqloD; jajvetlh loD nen moj.}  "The son of a Klingon
is a man the day he can first hold a blade."

>...I think you are both arguing for something ugly. This
>really is unnecessary. We have far less controversial, ambiguous ways to
>express all these ideas. Why not use these better methods of speech?

Controversy and ambiguity do have their places in an expressive language.
To be sure, I'd avoid them if I wanted to get across a direct idea with a
minimum of fuss.  But in this case I'm trying to explain -- perhaps in
advance of any real use -- exactly why I'd interpret certain phrases the
way I would.

-- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh




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