[151] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: "nuqneH"
dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Feb 16 19:17:50 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: krankor@IMA.ISC.COM (Captain Krankor)
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 92 18:01:20 -0500
I think I've said this before, but once more for the record:
nuqneH does *not* mean "what do you want?". Yes, that is the literal meaning,
but in practice it is just a greeting. It is not asking the question
"what do you want?" any more than when someone says "Howdy" there are
requesting the information "How do you do?" or when you call someone a
"son of a bitch" you are indicating that their mother was literally a canine.
This comes from Okrand himself (well, the analogies are mine {{:-). The ramific
ations
are: 1) Yes, you can initiate a conv with nuqneH and 2) You do *not* respond
to nuqneH by trying to answer the question and telling what you want (except to
explicitly be cute or funny).
Unfortunately, this leaves open the question of: Just how *do* you respond to
nuqneH? Alak, I fear that Okrand's answer would be that you don't, you just get
to the point of the conversation. But, of course, this feels odd, and the probl
em
is exacerbated by the fact that it can be *hard* to get into the conversation
when one is struggling with the language {{;-). I tend to just answer back with
another nuqneH, since it is supposed to be just a greeting. Any other ideas?
--Krankor
