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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/18/2019 4:17 PM, qurgh lungqIj
wrote:<br>
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<div dir="ltr">On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 4:06 PM SuStel <<a
href="mailto:sustel@trimboli.name" moz-do-not-send="true">sustel@trimboli.name</a>>
wrote:<br>
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<div>On 12/18/2019 3:45 PM, qurgh lungqIj wrote:<br>
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<div>I'd rather not frame it either way. I'd rather use
the words to describe actions regardless of what my
cultural or linguistic biases might try to dictate
about those actions. <br>
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<p>Klingon is not a technical or programming language; it
does not express objective truths beyond cultural or
linguistic biases. It has those biases built in on
purpose, and many of the words Okrand gives us come with
some kind of cultural or linguistic note on their usage.</p>
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<div>Right, and I want to use ITS cultural and linguistic
biases, not the ones I've been raised with in my language
and culture. This is my personal choice.</div>
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<p>And I'm telling you you don't KNOW Klingon's cultural and
linguistic biases because you're not a Klingon. We only know what
we're told, and we haven't been told this.<br>
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<div class="gmail_quote">We do know that ngagh can refer to what
"people" do, since we have {targhlIj yIngagh! yIruch!}. That's
a clear example of one "person" telling another "person" to do
an act with an "animal".</div>
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<p>And it's an insult. It's probably an insult because it lowers the
person spoken to to the level of an animal. It's not evidence at
all that <b>ngagh</b> is what people do, because you're
linguistically transforming your target into an animal. We have
other Klingon insults that do the same thing, like <b>Ha'DIbaH.</b>
In other words, you're treating the target like a not-person.<br>
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<p>It's like using the non-language-using suffixes on a noun to
refer to a language-using being. <b>HoDlIj</b> is insulting to
the <b>HoD,</b> probably because you're implying the <b>HoD</b>
is not capable of using language. Even though you know perfectly
well that the <b>HoD</b> is quite capable of using language. You
can't use <b>HoDlIj</b> in normal conversation, even if it's
perfectly understandable.</p>
<p>Likewise, <b>targhlIj yIngagh</b> may be lowering the target to
the level of a targ. This sentence proves nothing about whether
people can normally <b>ngagh.</b> All we know is that in that
kind of insult, they can. But our knowledge is completely limited
to that domain.<br>
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<div class="gmail_quote"> To me, that usage seems to match with
how we use the f-word, and is what led me to speculate that
{ngagh} is what one thing does to another thing, regardless of
if that thing would be classified as a "person" or an
"animal". <br>
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<p>It only matches one sense of the f-word, and only loosely. The
f-word has plenty of other meanings that, in the right context,
are perfectly acceptable and don't match. In Klingon, <b>ngagh</b>
appears to be usable by people in order to insult them, possibly
by lowering them to the level of an animal, but can it be used
outside of that sense? That's been the question all along. Can <b>ngagh</b>
be used the same was as <b>nga'chuq</b> apparently can? We don't
have evidence. We have lots of opinions, but no evidence.<br>
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<p>You gave your speculation, for which you seem to agree
we have no evidence. I didn't see any reason to comment
on that. For your part, you ignored my request to
provide an example of how someone in the mainstream
would use the word <i>mate</i> to refer to people
having sex.<br>
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<div>I did, because it's totally off-topic and has nothing to
do with the Klingon language. I have no interest in helping
you locate information about English that you can locate
yourself. <br>
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<p>There is another special-use word in English. Literally, it just
refers to the dung of a male bovine. In this case it is an
expression of disbelief that you are actually capable of backing
up your statement. <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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