[83976] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Missing question words
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alan Anderson)
Mon Jan 14 23:28:51 2008
In-Reply-To: <478BAEEF.6070103@trimboli.name>
From: Alan Anderson <aranders@insightbb.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:24:02 -0500
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
On Jan 14, 2008, at 1:50 PM, David Trimboli wrote:
> QuchtaHghach 'ar Daghaj?
> How much continued happiness do you have?
>
> ... Without a Happy Meter (TM), we cannot expect a direct answer to
> this question....
>
> These are all perfectly valid workarounds, but they don't actually ask
> "How happy are you?"
It appears to me that the lack of a customary measurement of
happiness precludes a direct answer to the question in English as well.
I'm unsure why you seem unsatisfied with having to recast the
question. Direct translation is unavailable in many cases, and we
have a number of Okrandian descriptions of rephrasing questions like
"which month is your favorite?" and "what time is it?"
