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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/25/2021 7:45 AM, mayqel qunen'oS
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAP7F2cLK=pbBKqbGywyAKr8midktNdO_N-XPWctVm7ZGW69W5A@mail.gmail.com">(st.klingon
11/1997): <br>
> Speakers who do this seem to be aware that they are breaking
the rules, <br>
> so they are doing it for rhetorical effect. (It has the same
sort of feeling, perhaps, <br>
> as if someone were to say in English … “It's lightninging and
thundering outside…”)<br>
<br>
What is this "this" which speakers do?<br>
</blockquote>
<p>Erroneously think of <b>-moH</b> as being part of the verb stem
and saying things like <b>quvmoH'egh</b><i> he/she honors
himself/herself.</i> See the transcript here: <a
href="http://klingonska.org/canon/1997-11-30-news.txt">klingonska.org/canon/1997-11-30-news.txt</a></p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAP7F2cLK=pbBKqbGywyAKr8midktNdO_N-XPWctVm7ZGW69W5A@mail.gmail.com">However,
I'd like to take this opportunity to say, that one of the things
in Klingon I dislike (and when I say dislike, I mean hate), is
when multiple meanings are shoved on a single word.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>If I say {muD Qun ghaH zeus'e'}, then what do I mean? "Zeus
is a god of weather", or "Zeus is a god of the atmosphere"?</div>
</blockquote>
<p>There are two problems here.</p>
<p>First of all, <b>muD</b> doesn't mean <i>weather.</i> <b>muD</b>
means <i>atmosphere,</i> and you can talk about <b>muD Dotlh</b><i>
the status of the atmosphere</i> to refer to what the weather is
doing. We don't have a term for the actual weather in Klingon,
just status of the atmosphere. So I can say things like <b>muD
Dotlh HIja'!</b><i> Tell me what the weather is like!</i>
(Literally, <i>Tell me the atmosphere's status!</i>), but I
probably wouldn't say things like <b>muD Dotlh Qun ghaH Zeus'e'</b><i>
Zeus is the god of the atmosphere's status,</i> because what I
WANT to say is that he's the god of the rain and wind and
lightning and clouds all put together, not the god of the weather
report.</p>
<p>Secondly, you MUST accept that languages give multiple meanings
to words. ALL languages do it. I can't demonstrate this in Greek
for you, but it's easy in English: I'll pick a word, say <i>high.</i>
Dictionary.com lists <i>forty</i> distinct senses of the word.
How do you know which sense I mean when I say it? Context. If I
say <i>I can jump really high,</i> you know I don't mean <i>high
</i>as in sense 16, "rich; extravagant; luxurious" or sense 18,
"remote." Or most of the others. You know what I mean, because
there's only a limited number of those senses that I could apply
to my own jumping.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAP7F2cLK=pbBKqbGywyAKr8midktNdO_N-XPWctVm7ZGW69W5A@mail.gmail.com">
<div>Now, yes, even in natural languages this can happen/happens,
but the tools one has in a natural language (vocabulary +
grammar) give him ways to make things clear. Let alone the fact,
that in natural languages there are so many synonyms for a
number of words. So one can simply choose another word/synonym.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Of course, being on this list for almost 6 years, I
know/expect that someone will say "context will clarify". But I
don't think that a reader is obligated to read an entire
paragraph each time the clarification could easily be made, if
only we hadn't received a billion different meanings for a
single word.</div>
</blockquote>
<p>You don't need to read a whole paragraph to get context. In <i>I
jump really high,</i> the context is me jumping. That's enough
context to know which kind of <i>high</i> I'm talking about.<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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