<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div>Would the following construction be valid?</div><div><br></div>loD ghaHbe’ be’ ghaHbe’ je ghotvetlh’e’.<div><br></div><div>—jevreH<br><br><div id="AppleMailSignature">Sent from my iPhone</div><div><br>On May 28, 2019, at 18:09, SuStel <<a href="mailto:sustel@trimboli.name">sustel@trimboli.name</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/28/2019 5:48 PM, Will Martin
wrote:<br>
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<div class="">On May 28, 2019, at 1:55 PM, SuStel <<a href="mailto:sustel@trimboli.name" class="" moz-do-not-send="true">sustel@trimboli.name</a>> wrote:</div>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/28/2019 1:32 PM, Will
Martin wrote:<br class="">
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<div class="">Unless you are planning on having sex with
an alien, why would you care if it were male or female
or neither?</div>
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<p class="">To direct them to the correct bathroom?</p>
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<div>Assuming they’d use a bathroom.</div>
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<p>You typically direct someone to a bathroom when they ask you how
to get to the bathroom. That is implicit in my suggestion. One
does not usually walk around directing people to bathrooms who
didn't ask. So yes, we can safely assume that an alien that asks
where the bathroom is wants to use a bathroom.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
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<p class="">To buy the right sort of clothing as a gift?</p>
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<div>Assuming that sex identity is the thing an alien would use
to gravitate toward a particular type of clothing.</div>
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<p>And some people do. So what happens if you're dealing what that
sort of person? An alien shopping on Earth, for instance, would
find almost every store selling clothes split along male/female
lines.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
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<p class="">To correctly recommend either a urologist or
gynecologist?</p>
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Assuming that such doctors would know the physiology of an
alien.<br class="">
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<p>Same answer as the bathroom.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
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<p class="">Any number of other reasons that might come up?</p>
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<div>Each one of the things you brought up could be answered
specifically with much more clarity than expecting one generic
answer to work for all of them.</div>
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<p>No. There is no "neuter for the purpose of going to the bathroom"
noun in Klingon. There is no "neuter for the purpose of choosing
fashion" expression in Klingon. The question is straightforward.<br>
</p>
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<div>Hermione’s robe looked a lot like Harry’s robe. Size was
more important than sexual gender.</div>
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<p>Utterly irrelevant.</p>
<p><br>
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<div class=""> Some trees are considered male and others
of its species female, but unless you are seeking
fertile fruit, most people never bother to figure out
whether a tree is a he or a she.</div>
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<p class="">Because in English trees are never <i class="">he</i>
or <i class="">she;</i> they're always <i class="">it,</i>
regardless of their sexual properties.</p>
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<div>[whiny voice] Yes, but sometimes it’s REALLY IMPORTANT to
know whether a tree is a boy or a girl.</div>
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<p>That's true. In biology or agriculture, one might need to know.
And the tree is still called an <i>it,</i> regardless.<br>
</p>
<p><br class="">
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<div class=""> Gender can have all kinds of categorization
systems, like marking the difference between old words
vs. newer words borrowed from some other language.
Klingon gender has to do with marking the difference
between beings capable of using language, body parts,
and everything else. Biological sex role has nothing to
do with it.</div>
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<div class=""><br class="">
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<div class="">So, in Klingon, you’d be less interested in
noting that it wasn’t male or female (since there is no
“he” or “she” or “it” to use as the pronoun when
discussing the alien), but instead, you’d be trying to
figure out whether it used language.</div>
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<p class="">And yet there are still situations in which you
want to express the biological sex of someone or
something, so there should be a way to do it, and you
should be able to discuss it.</p>
<p class="">(There are a couple of extreme cases of gender
in English. For instance, some maintain that the
difference between <i class="">blond</i> and <i class="">blonde</i>
is as in French: the <i class="">-e</i> makes the
adjective feminine, and should be used when referring to
blond(e) women. Others maintain that this distinction
belongs to French, not English, and that <i class="">blond</i>
should be used for all people with this color hair.)</p>
<p class="">Back to the original question: sorry, I can't
think of a better way to say <i class="">neuter</i> than
to say <b class="">be' 'oHbe'; loD 'oHbe'</b> or
variations thereof.<br class="">
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<div>Yes, but they are ALIENS. They OBVIOUSLY are not men or
women, even if they ARE male or female.</div>
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<p>In Klingon, <b>loD</b> and <b>be'</b> mean <i>male</i> and <i>female,</i>
not just <i>man</i> and <i>woman.</i><br>
</p>
<p><br>
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<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:3C5206D3-C2C2-4641-B4FB-D2ECF3802E49@mac.com">
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<div>That’s why I picked {rur} instead of a pronoun, since we
know from describing colors and such that {rur} is used when
you are comparing an aspect of something to another thing,
even when the things themselves are not generally similar.</div>
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<p>Unnecessary, since the word <b>loD </b>can be used in Okrandian
Klingon canon to mean adult male member of any sentient species.<br>
</p>
<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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