tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 22 17:33:34 2002
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Re: Why do type 6s come before type 7s?
ja' tulwI':
>you have the rules in your brain, and therefore you can feel what's
>right and wrong.
Actually, I think I'm at the point where what I have in my brain is the
language itself. The rules are not important when using the language, only
when analyzing and explaining it.
By analogy, when an airplane flies, it doesn't use the equations which
describe the Bournelli effect. It uses the underlying physics that the
equations were derived from by observation. Similarly, when we speak our
native languages, we're not using the rules of grammar in order to do it.
The rules are merely a way of explaining the language; they aren't really
involved when *speaking* it. And while the rules are peppered with
"usually" and "unless" and "except", the language just *is*.
>unless you don't give names and rules to what you
>feel, you cannot teach the language to someone else, you can only
>repeat it and make the other one repeat. this is the natural way of
>teaching, and of course it is beautiful and all.
You can't teach someone *about* the language unless you start labeling and
describing its parts. But people are wired to learn language by example,
not by description. I think that if you're explicitly considering the
rules while you talk or write, you're not really speaking the language.
You're just translating.
>the only problem
>here is that i am interested in the rules. i want to know them by
>name, as to speak. you don't. that's all.
You do have a copy of The Klingon Dictionary, don't you? You can find the
rules and names there.
Oh, occasionally a term or phrase will be used in this email discussion
group and end up sticking, such as the "ship in which I fled" problem, or
the "cat in the hat" and "question as object" constructions. Some of these
terms get documented in the FAQ list for the group
(http://www.bigfoot.com/~dspeers/klingon/faq.htm).
But until you can use the terminology given to us by the man who brought
this language to us, debating about other terminology is a recipe for
misunderstanding. Going on about things like case marking in Klingon is
doubly problematic, because 1) not everyone you're talking to knows what
you mean by "case", and 2) you're likely to assume things about Klingon,
based on your understanding of the term, which might not be true.
-- ghunchu'wI'