[tlhIngan Hol] Quvar, QISmaS cake Davutta''a'

[Felix Malmenbeck]

Marc Okrand sometimes points out that Klingon is a spoken language first and a written language second.


For example, he tends to care less than most of us do about whether or not a noun-noun compound is written as one word or two words.

There are some exceptions to this, however, such as his description about the spelling distinction regarding {wabDo} vs. {wab Do}:

https://www.kli.org/activities/qepmey/qephommey/qephom-2016/


In any event, I suspect that punctuation might be less standardized in Klingon than it is in English, and therefore be used mainly for the sake of clarity and disambiguation.

When writing a single, simple sentence, as is often the case in TKD, punctuation might not be considered very important, and might even be completely optional.

When writing poetry, punctuation might follow (or boldly subvert!) the standards of the form one is using.


I think it's almost certain that some conventions would be bound to one's profession, which might either be required by some authority or simply be widely espoused by the community.

For example, in science and engineering, as well as in law, where there is an emphasis on unambiguous communication, there would perhaps be particular conventions regarding how to demarcate sentences and list items, as well as how to frame (or avoid) complex noun phrases.

Klingon linguists and literary critics might have their own set of punctuation marks used to denote stress, tone, pitch, syllable boundaries, vowel length and whatever else.


________________________________
From: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol-bounces at lists.kli.org> on behalf of mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, January 2, 2017 17:28
To: tlhingan-hol at kli.org
Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] Quvar, QISmaS cake Davutta''a'

true, however the tkd isn't a poem and it doesn't use punctuation either

qunnoH jan puqloD
ghoghwIj HablI'vo' vIngeHta'

On 2 Jan 2017 5:59 pm, "De'vID" <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com<mailto:de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com>> wrote:
On 31 December 2016 at 18:37, mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun at gmail.com<mailto:mihkoun at gmail.com>> wrote:
> if you accept paq'batlh as valid, then you can't say to someone "use
> punctuation !". because if you do, you will be contradicting your own self.

ghuQ 'oH paq'batlh'e'. le'ba'.

--
De'vID
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