[tlhIngan Hol] law'/puS scope brief conclusion

[Will Martin]

It’s an idiom, like, “They looked at me like I was a red-headed step-child.”

The English response, “How about that,” is reportedly impossible to translate, meaningfully. I can’t even tell if it is a statement or a question, and English is my primary language. 

We don’t know what {reH latlh qabDaq qul tuj law’ Hoch tuj puS} means to a Klingon. We know when and how it is used, and we can translate the words, but the English translation of the Klingon words doesn’t convey the meaning that a Klingon gets from those words. 

It’s an example of the deep connection between language and culture. Much of the time, you can translate stuff from one language to another without needing a deep understanding of the underlying culture, but “replacement proverbs” is not one of those areas. They are fossilized things that you say without thinking in response to a situation. 

You can’t change it, trying to be clever and point to someone and say, {DaH qabDajDaq qul tuj law’ Hoch qul puS} without getting some strange, distrusting looks from the Klingons near you, since you would be revealing just how alien you are, and how ignorant you are of Klingon culture. 

Sent from my iPad

> On Feb 14, 2021, at 1:49 AM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
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>> On Sun, 14 Feb 2021 at 07:18, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> You've misunderstood what "TL;DR" means. It means the writer thinks their *own* post is too long, so they're providing a short summary for those who don't want to read the whole thing. It's like "SKI" (summary for the Klingon impaired), except for the time-impaired instead.
> 
> 
> The thing is that long posts might be off-putting to mailing list members who might have an opinion about something, but don't want to engage in a grammatical dissection or a debate. But long posts tend to generate long posts, because a person replying to one might feel like they might be accused of avoiding the issue if they don't address every point. A "TL;DR" allows people to reply to a long post with a short one, by ignoring everything not in the "TL;DR". It's not an insult (at least, that wasn't its original purpose, though perhaps some people use it as one).
> 
> But anyway: does *anyone else* have an opinion of what {reH latlh qabDaq qul tuj law' Hoch tuj puS} means, and what the comparative grammar is doing in that sentence? (Short answers only.)
> 
> -- 
> De'vID
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