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<p>tlhoy tIq; laDpu'be'.<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/10/2019 8:52 AM, Will Martin
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:4BA7D1DC-60AE-4228-A186-8265BEB7DBCC@mac.com">
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If telling
people that their style deserves to be cramped is your style,
perhaps your style deserves to be cramped.</span>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We
are a community of people with varying styles and opinions
that all deserve to be heard. Here in the real world, there’s
a Constitution that suggests that we have a right to free
speech. I don’t remember signing that away when I joined this
list.</span><br>
</div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For
the record, I’m not interested in telling you to shut up,
though it does wear on me a bit to get the sense that you’d
deeply enjoy any opportunity to tell me that. I’m glad you are
here. You are very skilled at this language, and your posts
assisting new people here are often very insightful and
helpful to them.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I’m
not telling you that you can’t translate “Almost a year ago”.
Go for it. Show us your solution to this problem instead of
repeatedly telling me that I shouldn’t be saying that the
language is not well equipped to translate it, and perhaps
there’s an intentional reason for that based on something
intentional by the language’s creator.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The
language has a mix of fictional and real world origins to its
features. It’s handling of “to be” had less to do with the
fictional culture than that the linguist thought it would be
interesting. The gender classifications came out of a weird
movie editing of a line assigning a whole new subtitle to a
filmed scene. The suffix system was created to make a small
vocabulary go a long way. The OVS word order was intended to
make the language as alien as possible, being the least common
word order among the human languages that the linguist was
familiar with.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Perhaps
this fundamental lack of grammatical and vocabulary tools to
indicate an approximate time period was an accidental omission
for Okrand, but given the line which Okrand either wrote or
collaborated on, “A Klingon may be inaccurate, but he is never
approximate,” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that it
was intentional, and based on Okrand’s take on the cultural
character of the Klingons. If nothing else, it gives him an
excuse for not addressing the issue.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There
have been several references to Klingons’ preference for
direct speech, without vague, floral niceties that humans are
so drawn to include. In our own culture, it is often said that
younger people like to text instead of call because they don’t
want to waste all that time saying, “Hi, this is George. How
are you? I’m fine. Sandy says the new Smurf movie is out and
she’s interested. Would you like to come along?” Instead, they
text: “Smurf movie: U wanna come?” Maybe this is like that.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In
English, we feel anxiety about suggesting a specific
measurement unless we know for a fact that the measurement is
accurate. We have a rich set of vague descriptors that can
encompass different vague ranges. We choose the one that fits
the vague range that includes the actual value. We are averse
to being inaccurate the way that the stereotypical Brit or
Japanese person is averse to being embarrassed.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Part
of the appeal to the Klingon language for me is the way it
makes me aware of characteristics of English that I would not
have otherwise noticed. Without this “almost a year” problem,
I would have understood this detail about English less. It’s
not just “the way things are in language”. It’s “the way
things are in English”.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We’ve
got enough evidence to suggest that Klingons perceive this as
indecisive and weak, or evasive and suspicious. Klingons are
bold. Humans and Klingons alike will give you an exact number
if they know the exact number, but a human will give a vague
term if they don’t know the exact number, while a Klingon will
decisively pick a number that is close enough and be done with
it. No anxiety. And if you disagree on the number, then we can
fight about it, because, hey, we like fighting. This is as
good an excuse as any.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Klingons
are not averse to conflict. They enjoy it.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Given
all this, it’s no surprise that there is no simple way to
encode the words, “almost a year” into an equivalent Klingon
phrase, even if we humans really wish we could.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We
can express the thought, filtered through Klingon culture,
grammar and vocabulary, but we can’t turn the words “almost a
year” into a similar collection of Klingon words that can be
dropped into any Klingon sentence to replace “almost a year”
in any English sentence we’d like to translate into Klingon.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Wishing
otherwise won’t help. And if you are really offended by trying
to figure out why this seems to be the case, well, enjoy being
offended. It happens often enough that you do seem to get
something out of it.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It
would be great if we could discuss stuff without the vitriol,
but perhaps it’s more Klingon-like to get into each other’s
face.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Either
way, I’m still here. And so are you. We might as well get used
to it.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div>charghwI’ ‘utlh</div>
<br>
<div id="AppleMailSignature" dir="ltr">Sent from my iPad</div>
<div dir="ltr"><br>
On Feb 9, 2019, at 11:34 PM, SuStel <<a
href="mailto:sustel@trimboli.name" moz-do-not-send="true">sustel@trimboli.name</a>>
wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal">If telling people that they’re vague,
wittering, and indecisive is your style, it probably
deserves to be cramped.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You still haven’t told us the source of
the cultural rules you’re citing. Where do we find all this
about being precise to represent a ballpark? How did it come
to be incorporated into the structure of the language
presented in TKD?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">-- <br>
SuStel<br>
<span><a href="http://trimboli.name" moz-do-not-send="true">http://trimboli.name</a></span></p>
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<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">_______________________________________________
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</pre>
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<p><br>
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<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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