(st.klingon 11/1997):
> Speakers who do this seem to be aware that they are breaking the rules,
> so they are doing it for rhetorical effect. (It has the same sort of feeling, perhaps,
> as if someone were to say in English … “It's lightninging and thundering outside…”)

What is this "this" which speakers do?

jIH:
> pe'bIl tIH 'oH wa' zeus DI'on''e'
> one of the characteristics of zeus is the lightning ray/beam
De'vID:
> FWIW, I read your Klingon sentence before your English translation,

> and I took {tIH} to mean "shaft (of spear)", as though the lightning were

> a physical weapon which is hurled like a spear, which is pretty much what

> Zeus does with a lightning bolt.

I like this alternate translation, since after all this is what Zeus seems to do; i.e. throw the lightning as a spear.

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.

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"?

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.

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.

~ Dana'an

zeus is, zeus was, zeus will be; o great zeus!