tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 14 09:12:49 2003
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Re: Is the language too bound for its own good?
- From: "Lawrence Schoen" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Is the language too bound for its own good?
- Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 07:08:14 -0700
>We need to brainstorm ideas on how to get the word out about the
>language before it...and our dreams...die because we
>procrastinated.
I don't see any procrastination. I've been traveling the country (and to a lesser extent, the world) promoting Klingon for twelve years. I've learned new skills and mastered arcane disciplines (e.g., incorporating, publishing, arguing and winning with Paramount lawyers) to promote the language. Your remarks above discount and deny all of this, and immediately cast anything else you might have to say into doubt.
Do we need to continue as we have done, absolutely. Do we need to do more still, again, absolutely. But such has always been the intention, limited only by the number of talented and proficient speakers that exist. As our raw ability to do more has increased, as new speakers have come to us, as they have progressed to proficiency, as some have moved through the transforming experience of serving as Beginners' Grammarian, we have expanded our scope and desire.
I take very seriously the Klingon aphorism mataHmeH maSachnIS, to survive we must expand, because languages DO die out.
>procrastinate...hold-back...shelter ourselves and the language.
>Something has to happen...expand the vocabulary and expand the
>language.
I see no holding back, nor sheltering. Of course, I can only speak for myself and my policies in guiding the KLI. But I am also advised by a core group of people, all of whom are fluent or exceeding proficient in the language.
I continue to see demands that the language "expand" but never a hint of what this actually means. Likewise, an insistence that the vocabulary "expand" is unclear. Klingon is an agglutinative language, we already possess the tools to expand the vocabulary in ways that yield both incredibly complex and subtle nuances of meaning. But that's not what you want. You want more raw terms, I suspect, claiming that TKD's emphasis and focus on terms that apply to the lives of fictional aliens in a far off future is at most useless, and at best wasteful. And to this I would again say "nonsense." Look at the translations of HAMLET and MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING and GILGAMESH. Look at stories written and told at qep'a'mey of the past. Even with my far from fluent abilities I can, with some thought, hold forth on any topic you care to talk about. I might do so haltingly, and perhaps stretch the use of existing terms (e.g., d'Armond's early example of "coffee-girl") but we would communicate and the job would get done and we'd have a firmer common ground for the next time.
So, I don't know what you want when you insist we "expand," but I know what I want. I want more speakers, not more language. I want less complaining and more participation. I want fewer excuses and greater attendance at qep'a'mey, qepHommey, and the annual yotna'. That's what I want for Klingon and the KLI. Now, either give it to me, or get out of my way.
Lawrence