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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/9/2019 6:26 PM, Will Martin wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:41ED2012-E653-450B-8073-150C44972332@mac.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Klingon is not my language, and I am not trying to stop anyone from saying <u><b>vague, wittering, indecisiv</b></u><u>e things</u> using the language.</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>You need to stop using this phrase. It's not clever, it's just
insulting and provocative.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:41ED2012-E653-450B-8073-150C44972332@mac.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">That doesn’t mean that I won’t weigh in with what I honestly think is an important link between the culture and language, because if you want to ignore the fictitious world that has a race in it that speaks this language and just be a guy who speaks it, you still have to consider that the guy who created the language was intentionally building a framework of language intended to be used by a culture that had certain characteristics.</pre>
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<p>No one is ignoring the fictitious world the language comes from.
We're just not drawing unfounded conclusions about what one is
allowed to say based on broad stereotypes.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:41ED2012-E653-450B-8073-150C44972332@mac.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">In other words, I’m trying to explain to you why this phrase is particularly difficult to translate. I’m suggesting that if you want to say what you are trying to say, there is a way to do it, even though you don’t like it because it doesn’t directly translate into the English equivalent.</pre>
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<p>It is not true that one's language better expresses the zeitgeist
of one's culture than a foreign language does.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:41ED2012-E653-450B-8073-150C44972332@mac.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Okrand has compromised a lot because the people who paid him to create the language and who continue to pay him to translate stuff are obviously less sensitive to his intentional design of the language to fit his understanding of the culture than he would prefer. The classic example was his focused intent on eliminating the verb “to be”, building that function into other constructions through adjectival/stative verbs, and the use of pronouns as verbs and the use of the topicalizer noun suffix if you have to a second noun that otherwise doesn’t have a grammatical reason to be there..., and then the director of the movie he was working on turned to him and said, “Give me, ’To be, or not to be.’”</pre>
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<p>You're being far more serious about it than Okrand was when he
made it. He didn't get rid of <i>to be</i> because of a profound
connection to Klingon culture. When he made that decision,
Klingons were just the black-faced bad guys from the original
show, a brief appearance fighting VGER, and some lines on a page
for the movie they were working on. He got rid of <i>to be</i>
because he thought it would be fun to make these curmudgeonly
aliens' language kind of curmudgeonly.</p>
<p>"Focused intent" my eye. It was a whim that he followed through
on.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:41ED2012-E653-450B-8073-150C44972332@mac.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Yes, Okrand came up with {HochHom} to satisfy a translation request by someone who paid him to translate something that Klingon, up to this point, lacked the vocabulary for.</pre>
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<p>As I pointed out, he could have dropped the <b>HochHom</b> and
it would have been <i>exactly</i> what you describe: an exact
measure of something that isn't actually exact but which gives the
listener or reader the correct scope. This was the <i>only</i>
time he has ever used <b>HochHom </b>in a sentence, and he
didn't <i>need</i> to. Especially by your own reasoning. But he
did.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:41ED2012-E653-450B-8073-150C44972332@mac.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">So, there’s a dent in this “may be inaccurate, but is never approximate”, intentional design of the language. But it’s a very tiny tool with limited scope. It doesn’t clearly solve our specific translation problem.</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>"May be inaccurate but never approximate" was not a consideration
of the language when it was designed. <i>Power Klingon</i> was
written by Barry Levine "with Marc Okrand," and it came out years
after the dictionary.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:41ED2012-E653-450B-8073-150C44972332@mac.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">He could declare that {benHom} means “Almost a year ago” and {ben’a’} is “More than a year ago”. Snap his finger and it’s magically true.</pre>
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<p>Ooh, I kinda like those.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:41ED2012-E653-450B-8073-150C44972332@mac.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">So, how can we work with this idea of communicating from a Klingon cultural bias?</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>You still haven't told us how you have determined cultural bias
you have identified. Aside from "accurate, never approximate,"
what have you to go on?</p>
<p>In one episode of <i>Deep Space Nine,</i> General Martok says,
"The human fascination with what might have been is tiresome,
doctor." It was sometimes suggested that this might be a reason we
don't see a subjunctive mood in Klingon. I might even have said
that myself. And then Okrand goes and gives us an irrealis
construction, so we can say things like <b>jIHeghpu' net
jalchugh, choHaqlaHbe'</b> <i>If I had died, you could not
operate on me.</i> So Klingons <i>do</i> have a way to talk
about what might have been, despite a line from a Klingon.</p>
<p>Now that's one line from one Klingon, and no doubt <i>you</i>
weren't fooled by that, but the fact is that lines like that fail
to lead us to rules of grammar or allowable or possible things to
say.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:41ED2012-E653-450B-8073-150C44972332@mac.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">English favors analog readout. You can feel the weight of the difference between a couple and a few, or a very few, or quite a few, or kind of a lot, or a lot, or a whole lot, etc. Klingon doesn’t do that. Instead, if there are six or eight of something, you say six, or you say seven, or you say eight, and it doesn’t matter if you are right or wrong. You are decisively stating a number that is in the ballpark — that gives the person you are talking to a sense of scope and scale. And you are done.</pre>
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<p>Provide evidence of this.</p>
<p>Heck, name a human language that does this.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:41ED2012-E653-450B-8073-150C44972332@mac.com">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">It’s a language, not a code,</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>This is another thing you need to stop saying, for the same
reasons.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
SuStel
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://trimboli.name">http://trimboli.name</a></pre>
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