[tlhIngan Hol] "Seasons of Love" in Klingon / And two grammatical questions

[Will Martin]

I think we disagree less than you think. Yes, punctuate liberally in order to make yourself as clear as possible TO YOUR AUDIENCE. In this case, the audience is a group of humans who are learning Klingon as a non-primary language. Those humans may better understand what you write because of your use of punctuation that fits the conventions of the not-Klingon language common to members of your audience.

What I object to is the suggestion that we have the slightest clue how punctuation is used by Klingons when they write using their native language.

Given that objection, humans writing in Klingon should use punctuation so that other humans reading what they’ve written might better understand the text they’ve written, but they should always keep in mind that there is no established convention dictating the use of punctuation in Klingon, until Okrand publishes a style guide on that topic (which would be a really cool thing for him to do).

Maybe the time has come, now that Okuda gave up on controlling pIqaD, for Okrand to publish a guide to the use of pIqaD and punctuation. That might put some teeth into our argument that pIqaD should be included in the international expansion of ASCII as a two-byte character representation so we could finally leave the Romanized alphabet behind us, for the next phase of truly speaking and writing in Klingon.

This message's thread was driven by a person who seemed to be seeking the authoritative, generalizable rules for using punctuation in a specific instance as a kind of formula for using punctuation properly. I think that person needs to realize that there are no known rules for the use of punctuation in Klingon. I really think he intended to take what advice we give as an anchor point for future use of “correct” punctuation, and as a student, he needs to know that there is no “correct” use of punctuation in Klingon.

We use punctuation as non-native speakers using a phonetic representation of spoken Klingon. We do not derive rules for use of “correct” punctuation.

pItlh

charghwI’ ‘utlh
(ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)




> On Jan 10, 2022, at 10:19 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> So, the less you rely on punctuation in written Klingon to clarify your meaning, likely the greater your authority on getting it right.
> I wholeheartedly disagree. Use punctuation liberally to clarify your meaning, because text lacks the cues that one adds to speech. Use punctuation because your words will often be ambiguous even if they are the absolute best way to express something. Use punctuation because a wordsmith who does not use every tool in his or her bag crafts an inferior product.
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
> http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>
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