<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 12/18/2019 3:45 PM, qurgh lungqIj
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CALPi+eS3b16Z0hnzFukbGDqtyYKsSFUr+QxLGPy1aBhvUxYWzA@mail.gmail.com">
<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>
</div>
</blockquote>
<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>
<p>There are things you can say in language that you're not <i>supposed</i>
to say. You can say "We am thy freighter, Urva," and get your
point across, but you've said it wrong. You've chosen the wrong
verb form, used an archaic pronoun, and chosen the wrong
determiner. It's understandable, but it's not right. You can't
always choose a synonym when that synonym isn't used the same way,
even if it refers to the same action.</p>
<p>Well, if we suppose for a moment that <b>nga'chuq</b> is used
for people (or language-users, or whatever) and <b>ngagh</b> is
used for animals (or non-language-users, or whatever), then saying
<b>luqara ngagh qeylIS</b> is wrong. It's understandable, but it's
the wrong verb.</p>
<p>mayqel's question is are <b>ngagh</b> and <b>nga'chuq</b> split
like that, is there some other difference, or is there no
difference at all?</p>
<p>The answer is we don't know. The English glosses aren't enough to
determine this. The reason he probably thinks this might be the
split is because in English <i>mate</i> is something animals do,
while <i>have sex</i> is something people do, and this is how the
glosses were given to us. Whether the Klingon usages of the words
matches the English usages of those phrases, we don't know. Star
Trek makes this determination even murkier, since aliens are often
said to <i>mate</i> with each other, while Terrans are not.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CALPi+eS3b16Z0hnzFukbGDqtyYKsSFUr+QxLGPy1aBhvUxYWzA@mail.gmail.com">
<div>
I gave my opinion on the difference between the two words, but
you ignored that part. </div>
</blockquote>
<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>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
SuStel
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://trimboli.name">http://trimboli.name</a></pre>
</body>
</html>