tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Apr 14 21:11:09 2006
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Re: Why we can use words that it'd take klingons 5 minutes to understand.
- From: "QeS 'utlh" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Why we can use words that it'd take klingons 5 minutes to understand.
- Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 14:10:54 +1000
- Bcc:
ghItlhpu' Shane MiQogh, ja':
>be''a' is an example... Anyone here would say that's incorrect no?
No. I would have no trouble describing Chancellor Azetbur, for instance, as
a {be''a'}: she's a strong, intelligent Klingon woman who is in the highest
position any Klingon could achieve.
>When one learns a language, they speak it better than fluent
>people.
bISagh'a' jay'?
>Why? Because fluent people only use what words they hear everyday.
And those who learn languages as second languages only use what words they
know from reading books or being told by their teacher.
>Many words are proper, but since they never heard it, they don't
>know the meaning. Things like Supermarine in english, would be
>proper, dishate would be proper and so forth, but we don't
>understand them because we have other words in place of those.
>it makes no sence to us, because we don' t hear it.
No, they don't make sense because the meanings you ascribe to them are not
immediately discernible from their form. "Supermarine", as I have said
before, strikes me as being something on top of the water's surface, not
flying in the air. And I've already dealt with "dishate" in more detail than
I wanted to.
>That dosn't make bugger and bollocks wrong (even if they are
>new words) because americans can't understand them. If i was
>wrong, words like discombobulate would be improper english,
>because it's not used often, but it is proper english.
I'm not saying "dishate" and "supermarine" are bizarre because we've never
heard them before. I'm saying they're bizarre because their formation leaves
them open to ambiguity. In poetry that might be OK, but in normal speech,
ambiguity is not usually what one is looking for. Communication, not
obfuscation.
>Not improper, just not understood.
Or not normal. As you pointed out, "mon nom est" is grammatical in French,
but hardly ever seen. Similarly, {toDHa'} might be correct, but hardly
anyone uses anything except {HoH}. The goal with any language is to speak it
as native speakers speak it. That's why we go back to canon so often in
Klingon, because it's the closest thing to a native speaker that we have.
Just because we *can* use words that would take a Klingon five minutes to
understand doesn't mean that we should. That's not our goal.
>Using such taboos could result in bringing new ideas into speech that
>can't be done in any other language.
But if they're taboo, wouldn't you ask yourself *why* they're taboo?
Klingons are not well known for their friendly attitude to improper language
usage.
>-'a' Dun would be klingon for Super Duper, but the klingon version is
>proper, but Duper is not a word...
Strictly, "super duper" is what linguists call a "reduplication": where all
or part of a word is doubled and sometimes altered slightly in order to
perform some grammatical function. New York English uses this fairly
frequently under Yiddish influence: <girls, schmirls> "who cares about the
girls?". Turkish has <reform meform> "reform and so on". Many reduplicative
constructions are colloquial: "super duper" is one of these. It's proper and
recognised in colloquial English, but you won't find it in any dictionary.
Klingon, by contrast, doesn't have any reduplication that I can think of.
QeS 'utlh
tlhIngan Hol yejHaD pabpo' / Grammarian of the Klingon Language Institute
not nItoj Hemey ngo' juppu' ngo' je
(Old roads and old friends will never deceive you)
- Ubykh Hol vIttlhegh
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