tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Apr 30 17:48:00 2002
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Re: what sounds weird
- From: "Sangqar (Sean Healy)" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: what sounds weird
- Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 03:25:28 +0000
> >Remember, what sounds weird in Finnish has no bearing on what sounds
>weird
> >in Klingon.
>
>Of course. (I personally didn't see much parallel between Finnish and
>tlhIngan Hol in this regard either.)
Well, besides the one I mentioned in my original post (dropping subject
pronouns except for emphais or clarity), Finnish has noun suffixes (some of
which are almost exact equals to some Klingon noun suffixes), conjugates
verbs by the use of suffixes, and has emphatic and interrogative suffixes
(although in Finnish these are not limited to verbs).
When I first begain learning Klingon, I found the easiest way to compose a
sentence was to say what I wanted to say in Finnish, move the parts around
to where they should be for Klingon (since Finnish word order is quite
free), and then translate. (Although I try to write directly in Klingon
now, at least when I can).
>My first line was in response to someone's comment of the "that makes sense
>because Finnish works that way" variety. He didn't say "Ah, Finnish works
>that way too, I understand that," he seemed to be saying that BECAUSE
>Finnish could do something, a claim that Klingon could do it too was
>validated.
The actual point I was trying to make with my Finnish parallel was this:
In Finnish, you drop subject pronouns more often than you use them , a point
it shares with Klingon, but which English does not share. However, in a
certain grammatical situation, dropping it in Finnish sounded weird, so I
went with not dropping it in Finnish. My actual claim was that it sounded
weird in Finnish so I was uncomfortable with it in Klingon.
And I don't really see a problem in general with using parallels from
natural language to illustrate points in Klingon. If some natural languages
have a certain feature and use it a certain way, and Klingon also has that
feature, what could be more natural than to go with what's natural?
(Barring specific instruction from Okrand, of course.)
And it worked in this case. Of the two choices I proposed, I felt more
comfortable with the one whose analog didn't sound weird in Finnish (or
Portuguese, for that matter, another language where you can drop subject
pronouns), and it turned out to be the one the more experienced Klingon
speaker who responded (SuStel) also favored.
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