[tlhIngan Hol] qoSwIj vItIvjaj!

[SuStel]

On 9/9/2024 8:03 AM, Will Martin via tlhIngan-Hol wrote:
> 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.

In fact, our canonical sentence is: *loSmaH ben jIboghpu' */I was born 
40 years ago./

That *-pu'* tells you you're reporting a completed event from the 
perspective of some time later. If you were to say *loSmaH ben jIbogh,* 
it would be more like setting the stage and putting your listener into 
your shoes at the time: the time is 40 years ago, and I'm being born.

*loSmaH ben jIboghpu':* Forty years ago, I was born, and it was done.


> 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}.

I don't see how it means that.


> 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.

Doesn't seem inefficient to me.

Welsh works similarly to English: /Dw i'n bedwar deg pump oed. Dw/ is 
the first-person present conjugation of /bod/ "to be" (also written as 
/rydw/ or /ydw/). /I/ is "I." /Pedwar deg pump/ is "forty-five" (with a 
soft mutation to _/bedwar/_). /Oed/ is "age." Welsh has VSO syntax, so 
literally this is "Am I forty-five age," or "I am forty-five age."

(If I were a woman, I'd say /Dw i'n bedair deg pump oed./ /Pedair/ is 
the feminine version of "four"; /Pedwar /is the masculine version. And 
there are various dialects of Welsh that might change the form of /bod./)

The point is, English isn't all that unusual in stating one's age by 
saying "be number thing."


> 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.

"To be" is so ubiquitous in languages like English and Welsh that it 
doesn't only refer to an essential part of the identity of the subject. 
When I say /I am running,/ I'm not saying that I am the Platonic idea of 
the concept of running; it's just the way English constructs 
present-tense sentences. Likewise, saying /I am forty-five years old/ 
isn't saying I am the essence of forty-five-years-oldness, and I'm not 
saying my existence is strongly identified with being forty-five; it's 
just the way English says this thing.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name
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