tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jun 15 09:14:53 2002
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Re: Vaj'Hom
From: "Sangqar (Sean Healy)" <[email protected]>
> >No no no!!! List usage is NOT an appropriate guide for understanding
> >Klingon! The way Klingons use the language is to be our guide, not how
WE
> >use it. An anthropologist worth his salt wouldn't base his research on a
> >culture on how his own culture interprets it! To try to piece together
how
> >Klingon works, we must analyze Okrandian canon, because as the fiction
> >goes,
> >all of it came from Klingon informants.
>
> Would a Spanish grammar teacher in Argentina base her lessons on the
> patterns of Spain, when the majority of her kids are never going to get
> there? Or would she rather teach them Spanish as it is spoken by the
> community they live in, the community they must interact with?
>
> Obviously, this analogy is not going to hold completely, since the list is
> not a community of native speakers. But it is a community of spekaers,
and
> how will it help my communication to use a language feature that I believe
> is defensible from the point of view of Okrandian canon, when I know the
> list is going to misinterpret it? That is my point.
Then you should get the list to wake up and realize its mistake. Don't
perpetuate errors simply because you want to be understood in the current
moment.
Another reason this analogy doesn't hold is that the list isn't supposed to
be an environment of "I teach you." It should be "We're all studying this
alien thing." None of us here has all the answers.
Not everyone who studies Klingon is on this list. If you meet one of them
and you've been using perpetuated errors, you're going to be pretty
unintelligible to him.
SuStel
Stardate 2454.7