[tlhIngan Hol] qoSwIj vItIvjaj!

[Will Martin]

One of the reasons I have interest in other languages is that certain abstract concepts, like your age (in a world without language, you, as an otherwise developed animal, might never have paused to consider your age, and certainly not have a numerical measurement of it), can be understood by different perspectives, depending on language.

loSmaH vagh ben jIbogh.

“Forty five years ago, I was born.”

I don’t think we have been given any other phrasing for the concept. I guess if you want to make sure you mean that this isn’t a status you’ve had for a significant fraction of the past year, you could say {loSmaH vague ben jIboghchoH}.

This gives you an opportunity to recognize how weirdly idiomatic, “I’m 45 years old,” really is in English. 

The verb “to be” is odd, and doesn’t even exist in all languages. American Sign Language doesn’t have it. In ASL, you point to yourself, then sign as if you were stroking the end of a beard to indicate “old”, then you sign the numbers 4, then 5, palm out.

Some sign the individual numbers below 6 palm toward themselves, then turn the palm out for higher numbers, but the number 45 is always palm out, like all numbers above 5. Some younger deaf people sign the numbers 1-5 palm out. It seems to be the newer trend, though I dislike it. Palm in, you could show a doubting facial expression and sign 4, then 5, and it would quickly be understood as “four or five” instead of having to go to some length to clearly indicate you didn’t mean “forty five”.

Anyway, to start with the perpetual deictic truth, “I am”, then giving a number, then indicating that the number is a time number counting years, then using the word adjective “old”, so that the listener can retain this string of words and parse it into you telling that you were born 45 years ago is as inefficient as it is strange, but among English speakers, it’s normal.

Klingon gives you the number, then the word establishing the number as a time stamp, so you know something happened 45 years ago, then efficiently tells them that you were born then. It doesn’t suggest that your age has all that much to do with who or what you “are”. Apparently, Klingons don’t take their age as an essential part of their identity, or if they do, it’s not so obvious in its expression in the language.

pItlh

charghwI’ ‘utlh
(ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)




> On Sep 8, 2024, at 9:31 PM, James Landau via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org> wrote:
> 
> qoSwIj vItIvjaj!
> 
> 
> I turn 45 today. (How do you say "to turn/attain [a certain age]" in Klingon?)
> 
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> tlhIngan-Hol at lists.kli.org
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