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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/6/2020 10:25 AM, Will Martin
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DF1AA714-F998-4312-9D53-F569596A199F@mac.com">
<div class="">Answering a question different than you asked, I’d
translate the English, “The origin of everything which exits the
mouth is the heart,” into the Klingon:</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Hoch mu’ luwIv tIq.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">It fulfills the Klingon aversion to being “vague,
wittering and indecisive”.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>That is an aversion you made up. No language has a tolerance for
being vague, wittering, and indecisive. No, not even English.
People who don't use language well may be vague, wittering, and
indecisive, and Klingons who don't use Klingon well may be vague,
wittering, and indecisive. Avoidance to this is not built into
Klingon; good style avoids this, in any language.</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DF1AA714-F998-4312-9D53-F569596A199F@mac.com">
<div class=""> It doesn’t wander through a pile of extra words.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>It also doesn't say what the English original says. It might do
as a substitute in the right circumstances, but it means something
different. There are closer Klingon translations that also aren't
ambiguous or confusing.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DF1AA714-F998-4312-9D53-F569596A199F@mac.com">
<div class="">Meanwhile, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that I
am more often happy when I think of something to say and stop
myself from saying it, than I am when I think of something to
say and say it. (I’m sure I would have been happier if I hadn’t
written this message and thus had avoided dealing with responses
to it, for instance. Notice that I don’t write to this list
NEARLY as often as I once did.) Essentially, my heart stops my
words, which the mind has chosen.</div>
</blockquote>
<p><b>tIqlIj ghogh yIQoy!</b><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DF1AA714-F998-4312-9D53-F569596A199F@mac.com">As for
your question, Okrand has said that Klingon speakers often express
a single English sentence as multiple Klingon sentences to avoid
grammatical complexity.</blockquote>
<p>I don't think he said it was something Klingon does to avoid
grammatical complexity. Some of the Skybox translations are quite
complex. I think this is the quote you're thinking of <<a
href="http://klingonska.org/canon/1995-06-holqed-04-2-a.txt">http://klingonska.org/canon/1995-06-holqed-04-2-a.txt</a>>,
and Okrand said that splitting into smaller sentences was "what I
find myself doing a lot, especially with these Skybox things." It
was something that OKRAND did to avoid compexity.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DF1AA714-F998-4312-9D53-F569596A199F@mac.com"> This is
particularly true with attempts to extend Relative Clauses beyond
the simple examples we’ve been given. Ditto for Comparatives, and
other constructions that linguists, in particular, so often seek
to extend to the breaking point.</blockquote>
<p>I agree about relative clauses: they can be extended while
remaining completely grammatical, but go too far and you risk your
audience losing the thread of the sentence. Since Klingon lacks
prepositions, it packs a lot more meaning into nouns and verbs
that can't be set apart the way prepositions can.</p>
<p>Comparatives and superlatives don't get extended legally very
much. People often try ungrammatical extensions though.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DF1AA714-F998-4312-9D53-F569596A199F@mac.com">
<div class="">I’m not telling you that you can’t do it. I’m just
suggesting that you might be wiser, were you to seek
grammatically simpler methods of expressing meaning. Certainly,
your Klingon sentences would be misunderstood less often.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>I agree. mayqel has a tendency to string a lot of noun phrases
together and worry about what modifies what. If a sentence COULD
be misinterpreted, then just rewrite it in a way that it won't be.
And if you're just interested in whether something is
grammatically valid, just apply the known rules mechanically.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:DF1AA714-F998-4312-9D53-F569596A199F@mac.com">
<div class="">But that assumes that your goal is to be understood
clearly in Klingon, and I will confess that it is a weak
assumption.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>There are other reasonable goals. From the original posts, I got
the impression that the goal wasn't to find an unambiguous way to
say this, but whether it was grammatically valid to say it at all,
and if not, why.<br>
</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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