tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Mar 17 10:02:13 2015

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



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

Re: [Tlhingan-hol] new vocabulary: theatres and auditoriums, Genesis and The Big Bang Theory

André Müller ([email protected])



<div dir="ltr"><div><div>Okrand himself is sometimes inconsistent with the spaces between numbers and nouns referring to past or present time units or combinations of smaller and higher numbers in general. In cannon, we have:<br></div><br>leS: {cha&#39;leS}, {loSleS}<br></div>Hu&#39;: {wejHu&#39;} vs. {wej Hu&#39;}<div>wen: {loSwen}<br></div><div>waQ: {wa&#39;waQ}<br></div><div>ben: {loSmaH ben}, {cha&#39;vatlh ben}, {cha&#39; vatlh ben}(!), {vagh SanID ben}, {chorgh ben}, {&#39;op ben}<br></div><div>nem: {wejnem}<br><br></div><div>So, I think it&#39;s okay to add or leave spaces in these cases.<br></div><div>- André<br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">2015-03-17 17:52 GMT+01:00  <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:[email protected]"; target="_blank">[email protected]</a>&gt;</span>:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Perhaps {HaSta’’a’ pa’} is better for a movie theater. The size and significance of the screen itself is what marks a movie theater as different from a living room where one watches HBO. Just an idea, not an argument. Who knows whether or not Klingons have movie theaters? If they don’t, then the important issue is what term would best give them an idea of what we mean by a movie theater.<br>
<br>
While it’s true that Klingon is primarily a spoken language, and the romanized alphabet is a phonetic representation of what is spoken (which is why it took years for Okrand to start using punctuation, primarily because he rarely wrote anything with enough words in it to require any), TKD did suggest that there was a difference between nouns in sequence and nouns run together. It’s not necessarily a difference with a hard boundary, but basically nouns combined with no space form new words, and it seems remarkably out of character to do this for nouns that do not combine to form a common concept. Klingon isn’t German.<br>
<br>
So, {puchpa’} is more appropriate than {lojmIttI’wI’nuvpa’}, since the former is a generic type of room and the latter borders on being a proper noun. I’ve always had the sense that all of these started out as discrete words that, over time, as they appear next to each other a lot, eventually lose the space or spaces between them. So, the words we have that are still separate, like {‘uQ pa’} are likely newer ones or less common ones, so that they haven’t yet gone through the language process of fossilization and compression to lose the space.<br>
<br>
I have, myself, argued in the past that Okrand is the guy who decides which of these gets the space and which doesn’t, and that the rest of us shouldn’t monkey with it all that much. I still think that’s true, though I’m not likely to be all that bothered by compression of common terms. For instance, I think it’s fine to say {cha’leS} or {loSHu’} or {cha’ leS} or {loS Hu’} and may myself do it different ways on different days, depending on my mood.<br>
<br>
But if anybody gets in my face demanding that I recognize a particular personal favorite pile of nouns with no spaces in between, if it doesn’t appear in canon, they won’t get a lot of sympathy from me. I don’t really care all that much; certainly not enough to update my lexicon with non-canon terms.<br>
<br>
lojmIt tI’wI’ nuv ‘utlh<br>
Retired Door Repair Guy<br>
<div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br>
&gt; On Mar 17, 2015, at 10:30 AM, De&#39;vID &lt;<a href="mailto:[email protected]";>[email protected]</a>&gt; wrote:<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt; On 16 March 2015 at 22:38, Lieven &lt;<a href="mailto:[email protected]";>[email protected]</a>&gt; wrote:<br>
&gt;&gt; Cool - where&#39;s the like button?  ;-)<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt; I&#39;m pretty sure we can use {muchpa&#39;} as well for going to the &quot;movie<br>
&gt;&gt; theatre&quot;.<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt; ghaytan {HaSta muchpa&#39;} luyaj tlhInganpu&#39;<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt; And even if these are &quot;only&quot; compound nouns of words we already know, at<br>
&gt;&gt; least we have canon definitions for these now.<br>
&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt; BTW, it makes me wonder again why there&#39;s a space in one word, and none in<br>
&gt;&gt; the other, but then I remember Okrand telling me that the Klingon language<br>
&gt;&gt; has always been intended to be a spoken language, and he didn&#39;t really care<br>
&gt;&gt; ybout space or no space in compound words.<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt; We don&#39;t know how Klingons would write these words, but there is some<br>
&gt; consistency to attaching {pa&#39;} to types of rooms in the Latin<br>
&gt; transcription: {jolpa&#39;}, {Qulpa&#39;}, {vutpa&#39;}, {mebpa&#39;}, {puchpa&#39;}, and<br>
&gt; now {muchpa&#39;}. However, {&#39;uQ pa&#39;} is the exception, although that was<br>
&gt; given as an ad hoc example. On the other hand, consider that English<br>
&gt; has &quot;bathroom&quot; (one word), but &quot;living room&quot; (two words). There&#39;s no<br>
&gt; reason Klingon has to be consistent in having/not having a space<br>
&gt; before {-pa&#39;}.<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt; On 17 March 2015 at 02:02, nIqolay Q &lt;<a href="mailto:[email protected]";>[email protected]</a>&gt; wrote:<br>
&gt;&gt; Is this basically confirmation that &quot;much&quot; is also a noun for<br>
&gt;&gt; &quot;performance&quot;? (Or, at least, that it has the same breadth of meaning<br>
&gt;&gt; that &quot;presentation&quot; does in the phrase &quot;feature presentation&quot;?) I<br>
&gt;&gt; always suspected as much. (Err, so to speak.)<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt; {much} v. present, perform (music)<br>
&gt; {much} n. presentation<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt; I think there was already a strong case based on the definitions that<br>
&gt; the noun sense of {much} means anything which can be the object of the<br>
&gt; verb {much}. The new evidence corroborates this.<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt; --<br>
&gt; De&#39;vID<br>
&gt;<br>
&gt; _______________________________________________<br>
&gt; Tlhingan-hol mailing list<br>
&gt; <a href="mailto:[email protected]";>[email protected]</a><br>
&gt; <a href="http://mail.kli.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol"; target="_blank">http://mail.kli.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol</a><br>
<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
Tlhingan-hol mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:[email protected]";>[email protected]</a><br>
<a href="http://mail.kli.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol"; target="_blank">http://mail.kli.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol</a><br>
</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div>
_______________________________________________
Tlhingan-hol mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.kli.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol


Back to archive top level