[tlhIngan Hol] duration to be used with the {qaStaHvIS}

[Will Martin]

Consider the difference between, “I smiled when my wife sang,” and “I smiled while my wife sang.”

In both cases, the singing had duration, but humans have this curious idea that an instant exists without duration. As if my wife could sing with the beginning, the middle, and the end, all happening in a time span squished infinitely small, we say, “when she sang,” ignoring the whole concept of duration.

A genius named Bergman (contemporary to Einstein, and probably more intelligent) pretty much proved this to be a stupid idea. All events have duration. Subatomic particles do not exist without motion, and motion requires time. Freeze motion, and all time and space become meaningless, since the only difference between a subatomic particle and the rest of the Universe is the motion of the subatomic particle relative to that Universe. No motion; no particle; no Universe. It all becomes a meaningless, infinite monolith, without temperature or boundary or energy or radiation or sound or color. Without anything, really.

But humans ignore this and make references to fictional instants in time without duration. {-taHvIS} acknowledges duration. Typically it equates the duration of two events.

In your case, one event is “while one second happens”. This is a dependent clause that gives you the duration of the event in the as yet unstated main clause.

It doesn’t matter how short or how long the duration is. It just can’t be zero, and the closer to zero you get, the less meaningful your observation of any event.

Similarly, points in space do not exist, and the closer you get to a point, the less meaningful your observations of objects become. But that’s off topic, except to suggest that the Klingon {-Daq} always implies a physical scope of distance that is always greater than zero. The boundaries can be very vague, as in, “I left my heart in San Franciso.” There is no point in space that is San Franciso. It’s an area with vague boundaries. Try to hone down a boundary to the molecular level and you can see how silly the effort becomes, especially when you consider altitude.

And a point is a lot smaller than a molecule...

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.




> On Oct 1, 2019, at 11:06 AM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Is there a minimum of time, which needs to be happening, for the {qaStaHvIS} to be able to be used ?
> 
> For example, can I say {qaStaHvIS wa' lup} ? Or do I need to use the {qaStaHvIS} only in reference to longer durations of time ?
> 
> I don't see any reason, for any restriction to exist, but I'd like to make certain.
> 
> ~ bara'qa'
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