[88842] in tlhIngan-Hol
vIHpu'ghach Hab
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (lojmIt tI'wI' nuv)
Thu Feb 24 12:18:37 2011
From: "lojmIt tI'wI' nuv" <lojmitti7wi7nuv@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 12:03:06 -0500
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Yesterday, when I dropped something, the phrase just popped out: {vIHpu'ghach Hab, qoH.}
It's the kind of thing that happens, leaving me wishing there were people around who could enjoy the humor.
I also considered how poorly the language is designed to express stuff like when I've been waiting for something and someone promises faster service in the near future: "I'm ready for faster service". Do I use {jIHrup}? Seems odd. And what about "Your pizza is ready." I guess you could just yell {Su'!} Otherwise, it's best to just skip the idea and say {DaH <<pizza>>lIj yItlhap!}
Or, I guess you could say, {ghuS <<pizza>>lIj}, implying that if you don't come pick it up, I'm going to throw it at you. Now THAT'S Klingon service with a smile!
We're handicapped by the lack of an adjective for fast/slow, having to adapt everything to adverbials, instead, so we can't have fast cars or slow drivers without having to describe these things in longer phrases. It's also a bit of a hassle to have no comparative adjectives, like "the smaller car" or "the tallest tree". Yes, we can express these things, but it takes whole sentences to replace two or three word phrases in English.
I guess this is the cost of a language that says so many things more efficiently than English.
pItlh.
lojmIt tI'wI' nuv
