[tlhIngan Hol] Maus-words: News from Okrand

[De'vID]

On Sun, 7 Mar 2021 at 16:35, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:

> today is the 50-anniversary of a German children sho named "Die Sendung
> mit der Maus" (i.e. "the show with the mouse"). The topic of this
> episode was a view into the future, so it was obvious to make a Klingon
> introduction, of which I am very proud to provide it to them. You can
> see it here:
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRgryUjxWes
>

Incidentally, you can watch the whole show here (but it's in German
with no English subtitles):
https://youtu.be/CxmO2ZTSTWE

 > the future
>  > - When I say a phrase like "In the future, nobody will be poor", may I
>  > add {-Daq} to {tuch}? {tuchDaq mamIp}?? Or must it be something like
>  > {qaSDI' tuch}?
>
>  >>> {qaSDI' tuch} should work.
>

This was discussed on Discord but since the mailing list is the official
archive I'll post about it here too.

In English, "in the future" is ambiguous: it can refer either to a point or
an interval. In Klingon, the former is {'op pIq} and the latter is {tuch}.
(And mutatis mutandis with "in the past",  {'op ret}, and {pa'logh}.) This
was explained at qep'a' cha'maH wejDIch.

There was a question about why it's {tuch} and not {'op pIq} in the above
example. The example might be confusing out of context because "in the
future, nobody will be poor" would normally be interpreted in English as
meaning something like "at some point in the future, we will eliminate
poverty". But that should be {'op pIq Huch Hutlh pagh} or something like
that.

In the show, they talk about Leben in der Zukunft (living in the future),
i.e., what life might be like in the period of time we refer to as "the
future (as a whole)". In that context, {tuch} is obviously the right word.

But one should also be careful to note that {qaSDI' tuch} is not a fixed
expression for "in the future (as a whole)", and that other contexts may
call for {qaStaHvIS tuch} or {tuch} as a time stamp. The point of the
quoted text was really that {-Daq} cannot be attached to {tuch} (i.e., in
Klingon, "the future (as a whole)" is not thought of as a spatial
location). The example about being poor or the fact that {-DI'} was used
were sort of tangential to the main point.

(This example illustrates why it's important to provide a lot of context
when quoting an answer to a question by Dr. Okrand.)

-- 
De'vID
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