[90] in tlhIngan-Hol
ranks
dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Feb 16 15:22:32 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
From: krankor@IMA.ISC.COM (Captain Krankor)
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 92 05:26:04 -0500
Some idle thoughts about ranks:
At first glance, one might be tempted to want to assume that the tlhIngan wo'
uses the same ranks as the FedHeads, but I really find this untenable. C'mon,
these are two *totally* different species/worlds/cultures, that evolved
quite separately; the odds against them just happening to have the same
ranks is astronomical. The Klings would necessarily have evolved their own well
before they came into contact with the Federation. And since we *know* that
the Klingons *certainly* are *very* into their military, and quite into their
customs and traditions, I can't concieve of *any* reason that they would drop
their own customary ranking system and adopt that of the tera'nganpu'.
More likely, they have their own system, but it is often possible to do
*loose* mappings between theirs and ours (oops! I forgot, *we're* the Klingons,
aren't we? {{;-). Thus, a Sa' is not *really* a General, exactly, it is just
a Sa', but it is a suitably high military rank that it can be *roughly*
compared to a General, so that is how it is translated.
As I see it, there are essentially two purposes that a rank system accomplishes
:
One is to establish a command hierarchy -- who can give orders to whom --, the
other to roughly designated the duties expected of an individual. For instance,
you might have your Captains commanding individual vessels, your Commodores
commanding individual attack fleets, and your Admirals worrying about overall
coordination of the entire fleet (I'm sure this is vastly oversimplified, but
it makes the point). My point, then, is that the actual set of ranks you use is
going to be determined by these two factors: 1) How much pecking order do you
want to have (which I would expect is a largely cultural thing) and 2) How
many differing roles do you actually *need* (which is more a matter of optimal
efficiency). As an analogy, consider why often one finds businesses today
that have way too many levels of management -- it's because they let the first
factor outweigh the second ;)
Well if you managed to find your way out of that paragraph, I can now make
the point I was building to: How a hierarchy is going to be set up is going
to depend on cultural values and on the specifics of what the organization
actually requires. *Both* of these factors would likely be *very* different
for tlhInganpu' vs. tera'nganpu'. Do Klingons have a greater or a lesser
need than humans to have petty ego-trips of being able to order people around?
Do their techniques of military organization and preparation require more
or less levels of hierarchy? Would they be more interested in pomp or in
efficiency? These are interesting and debatable questions, but the one
answer I would find *totally* unsatisfactory would be: they are exactly
the same as terrans and therefore have the exact same structured hierarchy.
Well, I seem to have run on much longer than I intended to. Oh well :)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
On a totally different topic:
Sloppy, sloppy, people! I made a *howling* mistake in my last tlhIngan Hol
posting, and nobody took me to task on it. I signed off the letter with:
wo' taHjaj
but it obviously should have been: taHjaj wo'! (subject *after* verb!!)
So 50 lashes with a wet noodle for me, and one apiece for everyone who
didn't catch it {{:-) Well, maybe the corrections have already been sent and
I just haven't gotten them yet {{:-)
taHjaj wo'!
--Krankor
