tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Apr 16 10:39:16 2006

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Re: Why we can use words that it'd take klingons 5 minutes to understand.

Shane MiQogh ([email protected]) 

>nuqjatlh? *canon* DaqeltaHvIS bIja' SoH'e' .
>What? It was *you* who said "so close, yet so far" when talking about canon.
  I think i can safely prove a klingon didn't write it.
   
  >However, the trick is to know when it's OK to break a rule and when it 
>isn't, which does take a fairly good knowledge of the rules. As well as 
>this, it's usually a good idea to demonstrate that you *can* produce good, 
>grammatical Klingon before you start intentionally breaking rules in this 
>way, in the same way as when writing English in chat rooms and so on, if you 
>use abbreviations like "omg", "roflmao", and such like all the time without 
>displaying an otherwise good knowledge of English, people will think of you 
>as somewhat less than intelligent.
   
  I was wondering why i was the smartest guy on my aol, msn, and yahoo buddy lists... But that's off topic.
   
  >ghobe'; ja'pu'qu' ghunchu'wI'; qechvetlh 'oS {muSbe'}.
>No. As ghunchu'wI' has pointed out, that would be {muSbe'}.
   
  You'd be surprised...
   
  >That's right. Translating English idioms into Klingon is not the right thing 
>to do, particularly since many Klingon speakers do not have English as their 
>first language. We do have idioms in Klingon, but if you can't use a purely 
>Klingon idiom or metaphor, it may be best to speak literally instead.

  Indeed. One of these days i should lookup a list of idioms.
   
  >absurd
   
  Thank you
   
  >Then we start to get into the story of {'I'}. Proper names you can do this 
>with. But if I start speaking Klingon and using the word *{maSmello'} 
>"marshmallow", and I have to stop to explain what I mean every time, then 
>I'm injecting my own words, culture and personal biases into the language, 
>which is not what we are trying to do.

  That dosn't always constitute as making sence. Proper nouns (except names of people) should be left as is with <> around it or something else you prefer.
   
  >I would say that {parHa'} is okay for "to like", since "to dislike" is 
>obviously opposed to "to like". {muSHa'} is also a good Klingon word, but 
>the problem is that so many people use it as equivalent to the English verb 
>"to love", which isn't really right.

  That isn't too far off base, but yea... From what i've seen the french don't have this problem. In english, love means to like alot "i would love to go to the movies". But to "love" one another is alone an abused concept. parHa'qu' would fit better. Though if you mean all forms of the english love, i'd be intrested to see how you interpret it.
   
  >TKD is not the only source that we consider to be canon. Klingon for the 
>Galactic Traveller, The Klingon Way, the Skybox cards, the audio tapes, Marc 
>Okrand's HolQeD articles, and various personal and Internet communications 
>verifiably from Marc Okrand himself are all treated as canon.
   
  When i brought up "pung ghap HoS" from TKW, some one said that it's considered "ancient klingon" and not to be used as an example. And until now, i thought cannon was referred to as a book called "the cannon of klingon". lol
   
  >Within the Star Trek universe, I would imagine that universal translators 
>would save a lot of effort on this particular count.
   
  And the universal translator would be able to shorten the phrase and keep the same meaning? I'm assuming you're talking about a computer...one quick look at google's french translator will give you an idea.. .Even worse, try an online japanese translator.. Translate a message from english to japanese and back to english... The results are.... Intresting... I don't care how far computers advance, based on my computer knowledge, that's still the best you'd get.
   
  >There are a couple of efforts that have been made at devising Vulcan 
>languages around the phrases and words in the films and the various books. 
>One was made by professional linguists K. and M. Zvelebil, and can be seen 
>here: http://www.marketaz.co.uk/StarTrek/Vulcan/Vulcan.html
   
  I didn't mean language wise. I mean... Have you ever heard how pointlessly philisophical they get? "Patience is a virtue. Vulcan has 2 moons, Jupiter has 9, but you can't comprehend it because you only beleive in a planet with 1 moon." Note: They usually have more examples...

		
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