tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 18 21:23:02 2002

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Hol pIq (was RE: QeD De'wI' ngermey)



On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, DloraH wrote:
> > ... And from that viewpoint, the language has been pretty stagnant...
>
> How many new words or grammar was added to english in the past year?
> How about the year before?
>
> Klingon has expanded over 100% from what was originally presented less than
> 2 decades ago.
>
> But I agree there are a lot of everyday words still missing.

Not having everyday words is not good, but if they're that common, I'd
hope they'd be flagged for quick fixing.  I'm more concerned about the
less common words.  After tinkering with my fishtank this evening, I found
myself wondering if I'd ever have a word for "algae".  :)

I count 55 words in 2002; 56 I think is the actual number because {
Hutvagh } from HolQeD 11:3 doesn't appear to have been added yet.
However, the majority of those words came in two large blocks, one for
variations on the theme of "bird" (many of which being names for specific
fictional birds which IMHO is not so useful), and one for variations and
attributes of flight (much more useful).

I'd be more interested in having a word for "pray" or "worship", since the
best the Hamlet team came up with was "do aerobics".  :P

So if we get no more words this year, we've got just under 5 words per
month, but really we've expanded only on two specific areas of
description.

It's also interesting to note that before the "bird influx" in
mid-January, the previous influx was in mid-July of 2001, when we got a
batch of words for each individual finger and toe (which IMHO seems
particularly unnecessary, considering that once you have words for
"finger", "thumb" and "toe", you could easily use ordinals for further
identification with little loss.  English doesn't have a special word for
"big toe" (although we do have idioms for things like "trigger finger" and
"ring finger", I don't think we needed special words for that in Klingon,
either...)  Before that, it was the KGT in late 2000.  2000 appears to
have been the most productive year, with words for familial relations
(cousin, niece, nephew, uncle, aunt, etc.) and words (actually, idioms)
for the basic mathematical functions (add, subtract, multiply, divide).

One unfortunate pattern I'm seeing is that MO is producing brand new words
for us, rather than overloading existing words.  The mathematical words
are interesting, and better yet, a logical extension of the existing body
of words.  The other words look more like they were generated by a random
consonant-vowel-consonant generator...

...Paul

 **        Have a question that reality just can't answer?        **
  ** Visit Project Galactic Guide http://www.galactic-guide.com/ **
    "Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them"
                         -- Adlai Stevenson



Back to archive top level