[tlhIngan Hol] rules to live by

[SuStel]

On 7/9/2021 10:36 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
> SuStel:
> > Legal possession and physical
> > possession are not the same as
> > grammatical possession. Klingon, like
> > English, uses the concept of possession
> > to represent relationships between
> > people. My child (and puqwI') means the
> > relationship between me and the person
> > is that of parent (me) and child.
>
> Yes, I understand. That's why I can't understand ghunchu'wI' saying 
> that writing {be'wI'} could be a transgression.
>
> {be'wI'} = my woman, which in hector's case means "my wife". If 
> someone calls the woman he's married to "my wife/my woman" then does 
> he transgress in some way?

It's because /woman/ does not imply a relationship to anyone, so saying 
/my woman/ is implying actual ownership. In contemporary English, that 
is. If someone calls a woman /my woman,/ a lot of people will consider 
it to be socially regressive.

An ancient Trojan character might very well say equivalent of /my woman/ 
in his own language and mean ownership, as that was the common practice 
at the time.

But you were offering these ancient rules as rules to live by today, so 
ghunchu'wI' said that if he referred to his wife as /my woman,/ it would 
be unacceptable, because he does not own her.

We do hear Klingons on TV refer to /woman/ in the possessive, though 
it's unclear how much control or ownership is involved. But you didn't 
offer the advice to Klingons, or even ancient Trojans; you offered it to 
modern humans, and primarily English-speaking ones at that.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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