[1923] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Conjunctions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Tue Nov 2 19:06:36 1993
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@klingon.east.sun.com>
From: Nick Nicholas <nsn@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@klingon.east.sun.com>
Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1993 09:58:00 +1000 (GMT)
In-Reply-To: <01H4TL75PRWI91WBXW@delphi.com> from "DSTRADER@delphi.com" at Nov
2, 93 01:41:13 am
To DSTRADER@delphi.com respond I thus:
#Well, ~, your idea certainly has a whole bunch less merit than I wish
#it had. Unfortunately, in CK, Okrand himself makes numerous mistakes.
As my colleague ~ has pointed out, this topic has been discussed abundantly
before. And the rules we are playing by are that what corpus we get is the
genuine article, and we have to explain our way around it. I agree, it sucks,
especially when Okrand is clearly in error (schyeah, regional accents indeed!);
and Klingon not being public domain means it remains bound to Okrand's say-so,
which I think unfortunate for the language at its current stage of development.
On the other hand, it is good to forestall misevolution of the language into
overt English influence --- something as easy as falling off a log, given the
speaker base taking the language up.
#But probably the most aggrivating of all is the fact that Okrand simply
#omitted the {lu-} prefix in two places where I'm sure they must be:
#"They don't serve Romulan Ale to Terrans - too potent."
#{tera'nganvaD romuluS HIq jabQo' - HoSghajqu'}
#If the subject is indeed {chaH} (understood), then it should be:
#{tera'nganvaD romuluS HIq lujabQo' - HoSghajqu'}
Ah, but how says the subject need be chaH? Why not ghaH --- the bartender?
I was going to suggest the subject was 'one' -- "one doesn't serve" ---
but unless I'm mistaken, the Klingon for 'one' is -lu', which isn't in
there either. Still, I'd hardly call this a mistake: there's no reason
at all why the English idiom 'they' (after all, there's one bartender)
need translate literally into Hol.
#"Klingons never destroy good food."
#{not Soj QaQ Qaw' tlhInganpu'}
#Should be:
#{not Soj QaQ luQaw' tlhInganpu']
#This would be the case _unless_ {Soj} really means "foodstuffs" and
#its plural suffix is understood. But for some reason, my mind doesn't
#like that line of thinking.
The regrttable conclusion from this example is: update your dictionaries;
Soj is a plural noun just like the various nouns for torpedos. As perusal
of several Terran languages will show you, a noun doesn't have to have a
plural meaning to have a plural form. (There's some wonderful examples of
tricks Albanian gets up to, but that's another story...) And yes, this is
just sweeping up after others' errors. But then, that's how the language was
created in the first place...
#So it seems Okrand is really not in fact devoid of error, as some would
#rather believe his honorable status as deitous creator of tlhIngan Hol
#would justify every apparent inconsistency he makes.
Well, I hardly think of Okrand as God. Comparing him to Zamenhof, or de
Beaufront, or LeChevalier, or Jespersen, I'm in fact rather disappointed
with him for not doing his homework more consistently, and making more
Klingon information available. (Granted, there are good market reasons
why he couldn't make TKD a 1000 p. reference grammar --- no layperson'd
buy it. But still, if, as reported, his talk at a con translating humorous
English sentences was just random phrases out of the Klingon phrase book
--- well, I dunno. It doesn't inspire confidence.)
Now, that being said: Okrand is a busy man, and Klingon isn't his livelihood.
(I could argue that busy people have no business launching artificial
languages, but that's just me ;) ). His decision to leak stuff into HolQeD
is to be applauded --- after all, that's where the info will reach the
right audience, instead of sqaundering Simon & Schuster's money. And until
we have the equivalent of a reference grammar, the corpus of Klingon texts
is all we've got. Besides, this justifying of inconsistencies is not
exclusive to Klingonists, as any perusal of rec.arts.startrek.tech will
show you! And the criterion according to which they *are* inconsistencies
has to be carefully looked at. I'm not convinced that "he doesn't serve
Romulan Ale" as a translation of "they don't serve Romulan Ale" *does*
constitute an inconsistency.
%%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%% %%%
non me tenent vincula, non me tenet clavis, % (nsn@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au)
quaero mei similes et adjungor pravis. % Nick Nicholas, CogSci victim,
--- Archipoeta, _Confessio_. % Univ. of Melbourne, Australia
