tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 15 08:29:50 2002
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Re: "be'be'" - double negation
ja'pu' SuStel:
>you can't use your knowledge of human language rules to draw conclusions
>about Klingon, because Klingon was designed not to be one of them.
ja' "Sean M. Burke" <[email protected]>:
>Was it? Because except for its overly uniform syllable structure and
>simple syntax, Klingon looks like a pretty run-of-the-mill American Indian
>language.
Look both closer and further, and you'll see that the similarity is not
significant. Yes, there are some non-Indo-European features of Klingon
which mirror features in Athabaskan, but there are also features of Klingon
which have counterparts in Hungarian, Chinese, Hebrew, and just about any
other non-IE language you care to mention.
It's common for people with experience in a particular "exotic" language to
see it reflected in Klingon, or vice versa. The truth of the matter is
that when Okrand noticed his work getting too much like any specific
natural language, he intentionally took a completely different direction.
>It's certainly not shockingly nonhuman like, say, Lojban is.
"Nonhuman?" Like Klingon, Loglan/Lojban was devised by humans, to be
spoken by humans. Perhaps "non-natural" would be a better term.
-- ghunchu'wI'