tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Aug 20 05:45:00 2011

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

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

Re: mu'mey chu': matlh vItlho'qu'

lojmIt tI'wI' nuv ([email protected]) 

It bothers me a little that this conversation went something like this:

#1: I hate dribs and drabs.

#2: I love dribs and drabs.

#3: I love dribs and drabs, too.

#4: I love dribs and drabs, too.

#5: I love dribs and drabs, too.

#6: I love dribs and drabs, too.

#7: I love dribs and drabs, too.

#8: I love dribs and drabs, too.

#9: I hate dribs and drabs. #1 does not stand alone.

#10: I believe it's no point discussing about this and forming groups like, "I'm with him."

If that really was what you felt, you should have perhaps said it earlier, during the stream of people piling on, voting against the first comment. It would have best been said directly after comment #2, rather than waiting for comment #9 to speak up about it. Instead, it feels like a suggestion that commenters #1 and #9 should silence themselves and let everyone else move on, more comfortably without dissent.

Is this a game or a language? Do we welcome anyone in who is interested, or do we cherish our exclusive status (at the bottom of the geek ladder)?

I understand how special it feels to get to talk to Marc Okrand. There are styles of dealing with that specialness that I respect and those that I don't. When I had my opportunity, I felt a huge sense of responsibility that I walk the line between being polite enough to make him comfortable, yet persistent enough to get details about each word or grammar point that he explained. I tried to bring up enough questions so that I could explore not only my own beliefs and suspicions about subtle points of the language, but also to confirm or deny any perspectives that I had heard from the list, even if I didn't personally like those ideas. I tried to make it difficult for him to know which ideas I liked or disliked because I wasn't representing myself. I was representing the community. And when I reported back, I was driven by my sense of honor to accurately represent everything that I had learned from the exchange. I had the additional advantage that I had the opportunity to show my report on the interview to Okrand for a final edit before publishing it so that he could confirm that I was not inaccurately interpreting anything he had intended to convey.

Okrand isn't just a person. He's the root authority of the language. As someone communicating with him, you are not just a person. You are representing the general interests of the larger Klingon speaking community. If he gives you a vague idea of what a word means or how a grammar detail works and you just accept it as he initially presents it without exploring the edges of what he's saying and seeking feedback on your interpretation, then the rest of the community never gets the details. We are then all stuck with the vague sense of things that you were satisfied to accept, and we'll argue about it for the next year or longer. And we don't have any feedback loop that includes Okrand to make sure we aren't misinterpreting what he intended to convey.

And then, when you present what you've learned, if you allow a sense of, "... and I know more than I'm letting on just now," then you do a great disservice to the rest of the community. What good does it do the language for a few people to know things the rest of us don't have access to? Then, it's not a language. It's a game, and you just got extra points. Congratulations.

The tension currently on this list should resolve itself when those who have enjoyed the specialness of spending a week with Okrand report what they've learned in a more formal, explicit form so that the rest of us can know how well we've been represented by the privileged few in our community that got a full week of access to the single source of authority for our common language. I hope you have served us honorably.

lojmIt tI'wI' nuv
[email protected]



On Aug 20, 2011, at 3:01 AM, Lieven Litaer wrote:

> I believe it's no point discussing about this, some people do like 
> "dribs" and some don't. I would not like to see people form groups like 
> 'I'm with him'.
> 
> There must be some convention set up by the KLI itself. This email list 
> is part of the KLI. We have many rules for this list, so there should be 
> a simple rule which says "new words from MO must be published once they 
> appear." Something like that.
> 
> This must be done through the list admin, or the KLI director. They must 
> decide.
> 
> After that has been done, we can still argue if we like it, just like we 
> can argue about other rules we don't like ;-)
> 
> Quvar.
> 
> 
>

Back to archive top level