[tlhIngan Hol] can we apply {ngagh} to humans ?

[qurgh lungqIj]

On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 12:50 PM SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:

> On 12/18/2019 12:24 PM, qurgh lungqIj wrote:
>
> Klingons mate. Humans mate too. They might label it "making love", "having
> sex", "shagging", "doing it", "making the beast with two backs" or
> something else to try to differentiate it from what the rest of the
> biological world does, but it's still mating.
>
> Sure, but what we're interested in is labels, or words. Outside of a
> science-fiction context, nobody speaking modern English says *mate* to
> refer to people having sex.
>
I know people who speak modern English and use mate to refer to people
having sex outside of sci-fi. You really shouldn't make generalizations
about a billion and a half people unless you personally know them all.

> *ngagh* and *nga'chuq* seems to refer to basically the same sort of act.
> The question is, do they get more specific?
>
Apparently not.

I believe the difference between the two is that {ngagh} refers to one
person doing the act to another person who may or may not be an active (or
even willing) participant, while {nga'chuq} refers to two, or more, people
performing the act in a joint fashion: "I shagged her" verses "We shagged".
This is personal head canon though.

Or is it primarily used for animals ?
>>
>
> Humans and Klingons *are *animals.
>
> But languages usually distinguish between people and non-people, and
> Klingon basically does this in its capable-of-using-language suffixes and
> its pronouns. The distinction here may be important in Klingon. It is in
> English.
>
But often Klingon does the opposite of what languages usually do. If
something is important to English, it's probably not important for Klingon.
I don't think Klingon uses those suffixes and pronouns to
distinguish between "people" and "non-people", but between if the speaker
believes that "thing" can, or cannot, communicate with them. Something
could consider itself "people" but lack the ability to communicate that to
a Klingon speaker, or a Klingon speaker might misunderstand something as
being communication when it's not.

qurgh
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