[tlhIngan Hol] mu' chu' chabal tetlh!

Rhona Fenwick qeslagh at hotmail.com
Tue Mar 21 08:27:02 PDT 2017


jIghItlhpu', jIjatlh:
> peDpu'mo' DujwIj So'lu'
> "because it snowed, my car is covered"

mujang SuStel, jatlh:
> DujlIj So' nuq?

jIjang je jIH, jIjatlh:
> If you want to play it that way, peD je nuq'e'? And who knows?
> bIQ qutHommey? chuch ghIH? DujtlhuQmey taD? I'm not saying
> there's no word for the noun "snow". What I'm saying is, if one
> wanted to describe the situations that were being described, we
> do have pretty reasonable vocabulary with which to do so. Maybe
> I'm thinking of the qep'a' wishlisting slightly differently.

jang je SuStel, jatlh:
> I think you are. Someone asked for the noun for snow, and you're basically
> saying not to ask for one because you can find other ways to say it. I'd like
> a noun for snow so I don't have to play at circumlocution whenever I want
> to use it. I also find it highly unlikely that Klingons don't have a word for
> this common stuff,

I take your point. I honestly was approaching this from the perspective of "this is what we can already say, now let's try to work out where the serious gaps are".

taH:
> and that they play word games whenever they talk about it.

On the other hand, "word games" isn't quite a fair assessment. I speak a language where the only attested nouns for "love" are compounds meaning "heart-warmth" and "good-seeing". I believe, and will continue to, that we should be very careful about approaching the Klingon lexicon with expectations coloured by the richness and the semantic divisions of Standard Average European lexicons. If there's a monomorphemic Klingon word for snow, that'd be great, and I'd look forward to using it. But if Klingons (say) perceive snow as merely another form of ice, and only disambiguate when necessary by calling it something like {chuch ghIH}, then that should be fine too.

taH:
> It's a wish-list, not an I-can't-find-any-other-way-to-say-it list.

lu'. DopDaq qul yIchenmoH QobDI' ghu'.

QeS 'utlh
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