<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">It’s ironic, in that it’s a cultural explanation for how to use certain words, and you often and vociferously have objected to the idea that we should look at the language through the filter of “What would a Klingon say?”…</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">But it is based on canon, so it’s clearly valid.</div><br class=""><div class="">
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<div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Aug 15, 2019, at 12:03 PM, SuStel <<a href="mailto:sustel@trimboli.name" class="">sustel@trimboli.name</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class="">
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 8/15/2019 11:23 AM, Will Martin
wrote:<br class="">
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<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:374BE612-C34D-4AEE-8626-9D8B56385E88@mac.com" class="">
<div class="">By defining “Agree” as {Qochbe’}, we lose the
ability to casually express that we neither agree nor disagree.
We lose what we have for pretty much every other verb in the
vocabulary. The mere negative becomes the antonym, and so the
actual expression of the antonym becomes meaningless.</div>
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<div class="">In other words, every other verb has a “be true”
value of 1 (no negation), 0 ({-be’}), or -1 ({-Ha’}), but this
verb uniquely has only the values 1, -1. There is no zero.</div>
</blockquote><p class="">A long time ago I was involved in a discussion about "default"
Klingon qualities: how in some words English uses as "default"
word a word with a positive connotation, while the negative state
is described by modifying the word (e.g., <i class="">happy</i> vs. <i class="">unhappy</i>).
Klingon has a lot of words where what we'd consider the negative
connotation is the default, and you add a suffix to get the
positive (to us) connotation.</p><p class="">Okrand weighed in (<a href="http://klingonska.org/canon/1998-03-02a-news.txt" class="">http://klingonska.org/canon/1998-03-02a-news.txt</a>)
and said that with the word <b class="">par</b><i class=""> dislike,</i> the word <b class="">parHa'</b><i class="">
undo-dislike, misapplied-dislike</i> is more common than <b class="">parbe'</b><i class="">
not dislike.</i> He suggested that "this may be a hint at the
usual way a Klingon looks at things." In other words, the presence
of <b class="">parHa'</b> but not <b class="">parbe'</b> in the dictionary may be
because it's more common among Klingons, not because there's a
positive-neutral-negative scale going on. It's normal for Klingons
to dislike something, and fairly normal to really like something,
but not as common for them to be tepid in their reactions.</p><p class="">So look at <b class="">Qoch.</b> Since <b class="">Qochbe'</b> and not <b class="">QochHa'</b>
appears in the dictionary, we can speculate that this is another
hint of Klingon attitudes. The idea goes: they consider
disagreement <b class="">(Qoch) </b>a positive state, a lack of
disagreement <b class="">(Qochbe') </b>a common neutral state, and strong
agreement <b class="">(QochHa') </b>a somewhat rare and awkward state.
Basically, Klingons don't like to go any farther than "Yeah, sure,
whatever" <b class="">(Qochbe')</b> if they don't have to.</p><p class="">If this is the case, and it's just fairly wild speculation, then
<b class="">Qochbe'</b> is not an error, it's a cultural preference against
strong agreement. <b class="">Qochbe'</b> and <b class="">QochHa' </b>mean what
you think they mean, but English doesn't really distinguish
between these words in a quick gloss, so the common one came out
as <i class="">agree</i> and the unusual one was left out.</p><p class="">Or to put it another way: if a Klingon tells you he doesn't
disagree with you <b class="">(Qochbe'),</b> assume it's the best you're
going to get, and accept it.<br class="">
</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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