[tlhIngan Hol] Experience and usage of jeS

[Lawrence M. Schoen]

On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 7:49 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:


> Idioms often don't translate between languages, and since Klingon is
> unrelated to any Earth language there's no chance that idioms in one are
> also idioms in the other (unless there's borrowing).
>
I understand your intention here but I think you're overstating the case.
In part, because such an occurrence would be the very definition of
"chance" but also because idioms emerge out of behavior and observation and
Terrans and Klingons engage in quite a few parallel behaviors. Consider for
a moment the many idioms we have for vomiting. This behavior is common
ground and I would not be surprised to find a Klingon variant of "he tossed
his cookies" that would be readily understandable as figurative language,
without need to appeal to "borrowing."

But yeah, that's not the point you were trying to make, it's just the bit
that caught my eye and moved me to comment. Carry on.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/attachments/20170801/bb6c3481/attachment-0016.htm>