[3764] in tlhIngan-Hol
How to speak of existence?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu Mar 10 22:09:01 1994
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From: "...Paul" <cleggp@rpi.edu>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@klingon.East.Sun.COM>
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 1994 21:57:01 -0500
I was just listening to some Billy Idol (off his Cyberpunk CD), and there
was a chorus that simply said "No Religion" over and over again, and I
thought, "I'm bored, what is it in Klingon?". Religion is easy: lalDan.
But how to communicate "the nonexistence of"?
I consulted the tlhIngan Hol mugwhI' that I'm testing for Steve Baker, and
he had an extry, "tu'lu'" for "there is". I couldn't find it in the
dictionary, but noted that it WAS actually "someone did discover/find/etc".
But if I were to say "lalDan tu'lu'be'", I don't think it has the right
connotation.
Then the idea of using pagh struck me. But pagh is a number, zero, or a
noun, nothing, none. I suppose I could say "pagh lalDan" (zero religions),
but is that grammatically correct to have a non-verb-containing sentence?
It just seems like a sentence fragment to me.
This still doesn't allow for actually representing the existence of
something. I had "abstract algebra" a bit ago, and I always liked (for
some peculiar reason) the phrase "there exists an x". How, in Klingon
would you communicate the idea of "there exists"?
...Paul
PS> If you're going to go into a large discussion with this question, please
put ADV: in the title; I was just wondering if I'm missing something, or if
there is a way to work around it. I'm not "good enough" to follow an
argument...
