[tlhIngan Hol] 'eSpanya' QISmaS (Beginner's text and questions)

[SuStel]

On 11/26/2021 8:49 AM, Will Martin wrote:
> The issue here is that Okrand’s language and the fiction of Klingon culture are quite frequently nudge-nudge-wink-wink very familiar to life on Earth without a lot of thought. Why does Klingon have a 24-hour day at all?

I'm on vacation, and it hasn't been convenient for me to respond to the 
very silly things you've been saying. I've got a moment now.

"Klingons have adopted the way most civilized planets in the Galaxy tell 
time. They have twenty-four hour days." /(Conversational Klingon)/ Why 
would they do this? It's just a TV show; don't worry about it. A 
"galactic standard" time makes sense, and the humans driving the 
Federation to adopt "Earth standard" time also makes sense in a "we 
barge in and tell you to do things our way" kind of way. And I have no 
doubt that all the various planets have their own local versions of 
time-telling that we're not told about.

And it doesn't matter. Okrand could have told us that Klingons have 
thirteen-hour and forty-five minute days, and /klorns/ and /bleems/ 
instead of hours and minutes. It wouldn't have changed anything. People 
would be complaining that knowing the Klingon words for /klorns/ and 
/bleems/ were useless and would be pining for hours and minutes.

So yeah, the fictional Klingon culture is frequently 
nudge-nudge-wink-wink very familiar. If you've only noticed this now, 
you haven't been paying attention. If you've only recently decided that 
this is unacceptable to you, you've spent a lot of time learning a 
language you're not going to enjoy.


>   Meanwhile, we quite commonly assume that a Klingon hour is exactly as long as an Earth hour.

It's completely irrelevant whether it is or isn't. If it is, then 
they're just using the same "galactic standard" time. If it isn't, then 
they've adapted it for Kronos. When someone says *rep,* they just mean 
whatever equivalent "hour" is in the local time system.


> I’m not sure that it has been explicitly stated that a Klingon second, minute, and hour are of identical length to the human time units of those durations, yet we quite comfortably behave as if that is true. And now, you want to get all huffy about the absurdity of assuming that the unexplained “traditional” Klingon alternative to military time could possibly be a 12 hour clock.

No one but you is getting huffy, but people /are/ resisting your absurd 
objections. Others were perfectly willing to admit that there is no 
explicit proof that the *Qoylu'pu'* style of time-telling uses 
twenty-four hours, but when asked if you had any evidence for it using 
only twelve hours, your response is to rant about the foolishness of the 
fictional setting. Why not just say "I don't know" and move on?


> Riiiiight.
>
> And time zones? Well, Star Trek never thinks about time zones, nor does it explain how measuring time works without them.

Measuring time without time zones is easy. Everyone sets their clocks to 
exactly the same time. The idea that you go to work at 9 in the morning 
and leave work at 5 in the evening is a completely arbitrary convention 
that is not necessary to run a planetary society. So people on the other 
side of the planet's prime meridian will experience midnight at 1200 
hours and noon at 0 hours. So what?

The Science Asylum just did a video on this: https://youtu.be/DHIQxVhruak

In fact, I'll bet you can't even point to any evidence that this isn't 
exactly what any or all planets in the setting do.

I'm not saying it /is/ what they do, just that it doesn't really matter 
all that much.


> I feel quite comfortable assuming that the traditional Klingon clock is a 12 hour clock until we are told otherwise. Yes, we can imagine other time systems, but they aren’t American, and in this Universe, pretty much everything is comfortably familiar to Americans, unless Okrand wants to make a joke out of an unexpected difference.
>
> He can do that whenever he wants. And we can’t.
If all you have is a cynical attitude about the Americanization of the 
galaxy, why are you even bothering with Klingon? Why is everything with 
you a slippery slope?

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name
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