[tlhIngan Hol] Experience and usage of jeS

[mayqel qunenoS]

SuStel:
> So when are you going to sign up for the job of Beginners' Grammarian?

hahaha ! qatlho' jupwI' ! muQuchmoH mu'meylIj !

qunnoq

On Tue, Aug 1, 2017 at 4:29 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> On 8/1/2017 8:01 AM, Lawrence M. Schoen wrote:
>
> 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."
>
> Oh sure, Klingon will sometimes have idioms for things that English has
> idioms for. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Klingon had an idiom
> equivalent to English he tossed his cookies, but I would be VERY surprised
> if that idiom were chabDaj woD.
>
> Let me amend my statement to say that idioms often don't translate LITERALLY
> between languages. You can translate an idiom by selecting an equivalent
> idiom in the target language, but not by translating the source idiom word
> for word.
>
> But if you don't have an equivalent idiom in the target language, then you
> have to find the literal meaning of the idiom and translate that.
>
> --
> SuStel
> http://trimboli.name
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> tlhIngan-Hol mailing list
> tlhIngan-Hol at lists.kli.org
> http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
>