On 1/9/2020 11:24 PM, Alan Anderson wrote:
I believe we have adequate guidance to accept the claim that “Klingons wouldn’t say that” when the suggested phrasing is contrary to the ideals of behavior. It doesn’t mean a Klingon *couldn’t* say it, of course, but it strongly suggests that a Klingon should say it in a different fashion.
Suppose someone asked how to say /It's a beautiful day/ in Klingon. A good answer is *'IH jaj.* A bad answer is that a Klingon wouldn't say that. But doesn't /Power Klingon/ warn against saying /It's a beautiful day?/ No. It warns against starting a business conversation with saying that. But the phrase is perfectly good when the topic of the conversation actually is the weather. Now let's go back to what prompted charghwI' to bring all this up again. He agreed with my translations, then devoted 887 words to explaining why the speaker should have said nothing "if the context was so obvious to everyone that your botched attempt to make a statement could be interpreted according to your original intent." mayqel did offer context to his original request. He was "remembering one of [his] ex's." He said the sentence he asked about represented what he was thinking. There is absolutely nothing here suggesting a context that goes against anything we canonically know about Klingon culture or its impact on the language. charghwI''s essay was entirely misplaced. If someone were to ask how to translate /Beautiful day, isn't it? Can we talk?/ it would be entirely appropriate to declare that it's not something a Klingon would say. We know Klingons don't start conversations this way. If someone were to ask how to translate /Beautiful day, isn't it?/ OR /Can we talk?/ it would appropriate to note that Klingons don't start conversations with those phrases, but it would also be necessary to explain how to literally translate those phrases, because independently those phrases can be used specifically to talk about the things they mention. (A Klingon child has been grumbling because of the recent bad weather. The child and parent go outside on a nice day and the parent says *'IH jaj, qar'a'?*) It's perfectly fine to use what are told about Klingon culture to estimate whether and how a Klingon would say something. It's not fine to force every given context into one of the things we are told about Klingon culture. Not every utterance is governed by accuracy, straightforwardness, aggressiveness, and strength, and few utterances that do touch upon accuracy, straightforwardness, aggressiveness, and strength have obvious and unquestionable ways to handle them. "All Klingons are not alike," says KGT. "[T]here is a great deal of variation." "Choice of words" and "use (or avoidance) of certain grammatical constructions" vary in "significant" ways among Klingons. Let us also remember that /Power Klingon/ is supposed to be a high-level overview of Klingon culture and language for the Federation business traveler, not an in-depth analysis of it. Our ability to apply the lessons of PK are limited. So while we can sometimes try to figure out what a Klingon would or would not say, it is rarely appropriate to rely on cultural norms to dictate the only response a Klingon would have. It's halfway to being a No True Scotsman argument. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name