tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat May 12 07:19:09 2001
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RE: *Paramount* chaw'
SuStel's post is so right on, I was cheering the whole time I was reading
it. Then I hit a minor snag, so I'll comment on that.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Trimboli [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2001 7:40 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: *Paramount* chaw'
...
> > At first
> > they may have borrowed words, but surely the purists would have
> > protested the corruption of their language and proposed new Klingon
> > words instead. Indeed the French today are doing just this, rebelling
> > against the influx of English words like pizza, blue jeans, and computer
> > and3 inventing their own.
>
>
> Who are doing this? The French people? Fine, it's their language. The
> French government? That smacks of language control, and history has shown
> that languages are very difficult to legislate.
I don't know many historical examples of attempts to legislate language, but
the few I do know about seem to have worked remarkably well. I believe that
the French have something called something like l'Acadamie Francaise, which
does a VERY effective job of defining what is French and what isn't. The
political leaders of the Cherokee in the late 1820s legislated the use of
the writing system one of their members came up with (their famous
syllabary) and within a year, the entire population was literate. This was
among a people who had never had a written language up to that point. Then,
there's (I'm sure I'll misspell his name) the Attaturk. He hired a French
linguist to completely overhaul the Turkish language. He completely replaced
the writing system they had been using up to that point, made all the
irregular verbs regular, and made sustantial changes in the vocabulary.
Respect for the Attaturk as a political leader ran so deep as to verge on
religious worship, so his changes to the language stuck.
The main point to be gleaned from this is that SuStel is completely right in
terms of us, in this strange limbo between fiction and reality, learning a
language that is of a fictional race. This makes our relationship, in
computer terms, "read-only". The only person with "write" priviledges is Dr.
Marc Okrand. If you don't like those terms, go learn French or Spanish
instead. Then move to an appropriate country and try to convince a
significant population to start using the words you'd like to see used.
The KLI is not l'Acadamie Francais. Okrand is the Attaturk.
> If the people
> want to speak
> a certain way, they do so. Once in a while you get an individual who
> manages to make a few changes (e.g. Webster), but if people don't
> like these
> later on, they'll disappear again (e.g. split infinitives, no
> "fortunately"
> at beginning of sentence unless it's really an adverb).
>
> If you can demonstrate conclusively that Klingons themselves have
> chosen to
> use the word "ziggersnert" to mean "automobile," we'll use it.
> Without any
> Klingons to interview, you can't know this, and "ziggersnert"
> becomes a word
> that CHRIS says means "automobile." And not to put too fine a
> point on it,
> but who are you? (And compared to the size of the language--having been
> around since 1985 and being used on every continent, who are any of us?)
Excellent point.
> To maintain the fiction that what we're speaking is a real language spoken
> by Klingons, one MUST agree that only Marc Okrand has access to a Klingon
> informant. Otherwise we'll all begin speaking a different language.
bIvItchu', SuStel. I'll add that if you, Chris, think you are the first
person to step up to the podium and suggest revolution, you should check out
our archive. About once a year or so, somebody suggests this and the rest of
us roll our eyes and groan. Yet another person who just doesn't get it. Yet.
nI' Holmaj. ngaj qechlIj. HeghmeH jIloSqang.
> SuStel
> Stardate 1362.0
charghwI' 'utlh