[89547] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: mu'mey chu': jul
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robyn Stewart)
Fri Sep 9 14:56:22 2011
Date: Fri, 09 Sep 2011 11:50:09 -0700
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
From: Robyn Stewart <robyn@flyingstart.ca>
In-Reply-To: <4E6A5589.9000500@trimboli.name>
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
At 11:06 09/09/2011, lab SuStel:
>On 9/9/2011 1:23 PM, Robyn Stewart wrote:
> > At 09:36 09/09/2011, lab SuStel:
>
> > Then, seeing as the quotation marks are already doing the jatlh/ja'
> > for me, I may add more sentences, not intending to act as verbs of
> > saying, just to put more information in.
> >
> > "nuqDaq Daje'?" ghel baHwI'.
> >
> > mIy chIjwI'. "vIje'pu'be'. vISuqmeH HoD vIHoHta'."
>
>I see the transition, and I don't think it's problematical in itself,
>but I do notice that your examples always include a description of the
>manner of speech. I haven't been following the story, so I don't know if
>you've got other kinds of actions in there (e.g., jaghDaq bach HoD.
>"vIqIp'a'?").
I'd be surprised if I don't have things like that. Are you saying it
increases the gravity of my crimes against the language? Each
paragraph is a sequence of sentences, some in quotation marks and
some not, sometimes the former have explicit ja'/jatlh attributions
and sometimes without, depending on whether I think the speaker is
obvious. Also I've followed the English convention of changing
paragraphs for each change of speaker in a conversation, so there are
paragraphs like.
baHwI'vaD jatlh HoD "tInwI' yIQeq." jonpa'vaD QumchoH, "baHbeH'a'
nIH nISwI'?" leQDaq nItlhpach ghorpu'mo' HoD, QeHchoH.
jang jonpIn. "wej" jatlh. qejlaw'.
You know how a person could report in English, "So I told her, and
she didn't believe me. She's like "no" and I say "yes" then it's "no"
"yes" "no" "yes" "no," with the speaker possibly indicating turns
with hands pointing each way. Do you think that wouldn't work in Klingon?
How about this hypothetical conversation between two people at qep'a':
"Qanqor QongDaqDaq yIH Dalanpu'DI' nuq jatlh Qanqor?"
"qamuS."
That's perfectly understandable without the second person saying
"jatlh qamuS."
I think it's very important that Klingon reported speech be verbatim
and not change person or verb the way it does in English, and it's
important that we use Klingon verbs of saying correctly for that, but
I believe with context that
a) the verb of saying doesn't have to be there every time, and
b) other stuff that follows or precedes the quoted text doesn't have
to be a verb of saying.
If I read it aloud I will say <jatlh> or <ja'> for every quotation
mark pair that doens't already have it, thereby preserving my
assertion that they represent the verb of saying in a non-Klingon
presentation of puctuation conventions.
>It all comes down to the question of whether a written dialog differs in
>any way from reported speech, and we don't have any examples of the former.
If I read a story like this aloud in English, I find I have to either
provide different voices for the characters or explicitly say "and
then the gunner says" to verbalize the quotation marks. I guess this
conversation has just solidified for me a decision that when writing
extended passages of dialogue, quotation marks are representing the
word jatlh.
> > I just wanted to explain that I was not disregarding the rules or
> > thinking I could use anything as a verb of saying. This distinction
> > has precedent in English, as an English speaker would not
> > spontaneously say. "I hate potatoes John said with disgust." But if
> > they were reading a story you wouldn't be surprised to hear it.
>
>You wouldn't say it in English, but you might in Klingon. So far as we
>know all reports of what "John said" are done as direct quotations, and
>it's not odd the way it is in English.
True. I was merely trying to show precedent for there being a
difference between formats.
>It is SAO. The very last part of the SAO section of TKD says that
>{rIntaH} used in this way "is another example of the two-verb (or
>two-sentence) construction."
HIvqa' veqlargh.
>Thus, the question becomes, is it {HoD HoH
>chIjwI' rIntaH} or {HoD HoH rIntaH chIjwI'}?
I would really expect the former.
Thanks. And if you're not reading the story it's because it's too
long, you're not interested in fiction, or any specific reason I can address?
Hoch vuDmey vIvuv.
- Qov
