tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jun 24 11:29:01 2002
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Re: yajmeH
- From: Qov <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: yajmeH
- Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 09:33:27 -0700
lab Andrew
>Ok, suppose Klingons really were linguistically inferior. Keep in mind
>that if that were the case, their English sentences would reflect these
>mental limitations. What I find hilarious is the number of times Okrand,
>when given the task of translating some English into Klingon, has decided
>to split one English sentence into two Klingon sentences, even in those
>cases when the Klingon was supposed to have come first. We would have to
>believe that the (fictional) Klingon-to-English interpreter rendered two
>sentences as one, and that's even poorer practice than translating one
>into two.
jIQoch! pIj qaq cha', mughlu'taHvIS. tlhIngan mu'tlheghmey tIq law' DIvI'
Hol mu'tlheghmey tIq puS. mu'tlheghmey mI' Dachoqchugh Hol Davuvbe'.
I have seen this misapprehension before, from a native French speaker who
was fluent in English, but persisted in constructing English sentences that
were too long. She actually criticized native English speakers for writing
such short sentences, and felt that her long ones were a mark of education
and competency in the language. Finally we succeeded in convincing her
that the two languages simply had different norms for the size of a thought
that should be crammed into one sentence. Definitely we should not >laugh<
at Okrand's combined sentences, but follow them as an example of the normal
length of a Klingon sentence. Okrand does write some quite complex
sentences, on the Skybox cards, for example, but I think we have seen
enough Klingon to realize that Klingon sentences are in general shorter.
As you point out, Klingons fluent in English do produce long English
sentences when warranted, so there is nothing wrong with their brains.