[tlhIngan Hol] mu' chu' chabal tetlh!

SuStel sustel at trimboli.name
Tue Mar 21 08:41:01 PDT 2017


On 3/21/2017 11:27 AM, Rhona Fenwick wrote:
> 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.

I don't disagree with that. And if Okrand tells us that Klingons 
perceive snow as merely another form of ice, and only disambiguate when 
necessary by calling it something like *chuch ghIH,* then we have our 
answer, and the question was worthwhile. Asking for a noun for /snow/ is 
not refusing any other ways Klingon have to refer to it. It's saying we 
don't know how Klingons refer to it; would you please ask Maltz how he 
refers to the stuff called /snow/? See this stuff in my hand? What do 
you call it?

But when I say /I'm going to ignore your question about what you call 
that stuff and talk about how an unspecified agent covered my car while 
it was snowing,/ that's playing word-games.

As for your language that uses compounds to mean /love,/ well, those 
compounds, and any rules on how they're used, would be the answer to how 
you say /love/ in that language.

"It works differently than in English" is a perfectly valid answer 
available to Okrand, and he knows it.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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