[tlhIngan Hol] Klingon Word of the Day: 'Imyagh

SuStel sustel at trimboli.name
Fri Oct 13 16:51:20 PDT 2017


    From: "ghunchu'wI' 'utlh" <qunchuy at alcaco.net>

    On Oct 13, 2017, at 4:23 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name
    <mailto:sustel at trimboli.name>> wrote:

        On 10/13/2017 2:55 PM, ghunchu'wI' 'utlh wrote:

            On Oct 13, 2017, at 12:26 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name
            <mailto:sustel at trimboli.name>> wrote:

                I wouldn’t make that assumption. If you must quote a
                cat, say:*ghugh vIghro’; jatlh ‘Imyagh*.


            I think that contradicts the “not speech” part of {ghugh}’s
            definition. It makes perfect sense in my mind to
            treat {ghugh} as similar to {jatlh}.

        If it's not speech, then it's not a verb of saying.

    What is your definition of “verb of saying”, and who called {ghugh} one?

I should have "verb of speech," because that's what Okrand called it in 
his interview with Will Martin in /HolQeD/ 7:4. His first statement is 
"Verbs of speech are 'say' verbs, like *jatlh* and *ja'.*" Then he says 
that, unlike the English tendency to attach any old verb to a quotation, 
Klingon doesn't do that:
In English, we say, "Give me some water," he said. "Give me some water," 
he pleaded. "Give me some water," he yelled. [...] I think that's an 
English thing to do. That's not a Klingon thing to do. In Klingon, you 
*jatlh* and you *ja'.* That's about it. The guard asked the prisoner a 
question. He replied. He said, "[gestures a quotation he never quite made]"
He later admits that there may be other verbs of speech, but that 
they're few. "The way I see I see the verbs of speech, there may be more 
than just *ja'* and *jatlh,* but there is only a small number of words, 
unlike English."
And the bulk of this section of the article is Okrand explaining to 
Martin that verbs of speech in the *'e'*-less sentence-as-object 
construction are used to report direct quotations.
So does that mean *ghugh* might also be a verb of speech? Yeeeesssss, if 
you ignore that *ghugh* is explicitly not speech. If you consider "verbs 
of quotation" to be a better term to describe them, you still need to 
demonstrate that *ghugh* is not among all the other words that Okrand 
explicitly blocked from being verbs of speech, mostly giving their 
English translations: *tlhob, qoy', jach, chel, jang,* and that it is 
one of the few that Okrand wasn't even sure existed.
So all of that is a lot of guesswork and looking at things sideways to 
get to *ghugh* being a verb of speech, which is why I said "I wouldn't 
make that assumption" and not "You can't do that." Hey, it DOES sound 
like *ghugh* could be the "verb of animal noises" equivalent to "verbs 
of speech," but we don't KNOW that.
As for who called *ghugh* a verb of speech: loghaD did, just not with 
that term:

    I would assume that this word can be used similarly to jatlh:

    ghugh vIghro' 'Imyagh.
    'Imyagh, ghugh vIghro'.
    "The v'gro goes 'Imyagh."

He's talking about verbs of speech. He assumed; I said I wouldn't make 
that assumption.
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