I don't agree neither with lieven nor with Jeremy. The original question is how to say "almost a year ago". Lieven's anniversary solution goes: "one year ago happens whatever; not yet has happened its anniversary" The two parts of the above statement are mutually exclusive. If the "whatever" happened/happens one year ago, then how come its anniversary is yet to occur ? ~ mayqel *I love maltz* qunen'oS

Am 08.02.2019 um 14:51 schrieb mayqel qunenoS:

I don't agree neither with lieven nor with Jeremy.

The original question is how to say "almost a year ago".

Lieven's anniversary solution goes: "one year ago happens whatever; not yet has happened its anniversary"

The two parts of the above statement are mutually exclusive. If the "whatever" happened/happens one year ago, then how come its anniversary is yet to occur ?

Because I see the "one year ago" as a not very exactly defined time period. I don't know what Klingons think about it, but 99 % of the situations when people say "one year ago", they don't mean EXACTLY 365 days ago. It's usually only roughly a year, but also not clear whether it's more or less than a year. Am 08.02.2019 um 15:09 schrieb mayqel qunenoS:

{'op ret qaSpu' wanI'vam, 'ej lIb DISjajDaj wa'DIch} "some time ago happened this event, and its first one year anniversary is imminent"

Yes, that's the similar way I wanted to go and might even be a better solution than what I proposed. -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonisch.de http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/StarTrekDiscovery

On 2/8/2019 8:07 AM, David Holt wrote:

I agree with Lieven. The original question sounds like you're trying to be approximate. Embrace the inaccuracy! Is there some reason that it is important that it has not yet been a complete year? If so, then you are going to have to make that point separately.

Here's another "no true Klingon" argument. Whether or not a Klingon would say it does not make it unsayable. And I don't happen to think that a Klingon wouldn't say it. The advice to be accurate is not advice to cite data to the umpteenth decimal point or to cite no data at all, and it is certainly not advice to give precise but wrong data; it is advice to always use as much precision as you possess. If all you know is that it was almost a year ago, but not exactly when, then it would be perfectly appropriate for you to say so. If you do happen to know exactly when it was, then cite that date. As for the original question, I agree with those who say that the *tlhoS* in *tlhoS wa' ben qaSpu' wanI'* incorrectly tries to apply itself to the noun phrase *wa' ben.* I like mayqel's solution of *wa' ben HochHom qaSpu' wanI':* simple and accurate, though I feel a little uncomfortable about having "most of" a particular moment in time. I wonder if one could say *wa' HochHom*/almost one/ as in *wa' HochHom ben qaSpu' wanI'.* I wouldn't feel comfortable using that either, but it does seem to follow all the rules. Imprecise time expressions are always a challenge. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name

On 2/8/2019 9:43 AM, Lieven L. Litaer wrote:

I think HochHom is the closest thing we have so far, and the canon examply might even be quite clear and maybe even more useful than we thought:

"most of the 23rd century" {vatlh DIS poH 23 HochHom} SkyBox #15

Although I'm not sure if that can be applied to a not-fixed time period.

The difference here is that a *vatlh DIS poH* is a time period, whereas *wa' ben* is a point in time, not a period. *wa' ben* might refer to a whole year if you're pointing to it in a vague way, but it still represents a point where each year is just one point. I'm not sure it makes sense to say /most of a point in time./ -- SuStel http://trimboli.name

Am 08.02.2019 um 15:47 schrieb De'vID:

What about {wa' ben tugh [qaSpu' wanI']} "one year ago it will have happened soon"? Or is the combination of {wa' ben} with {tugh} weird?

I always thought that {tugh} refers to a time from NOW on. How does it work in English? -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonisch.de http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/Adverbial

or maybe: {'op ret qaSpu' wanI'vam; cha' Hoghmo', DIS naQ mojpu'be' poHvam} "some time ago happened this event; because of two weeks, this period of time hasn't become a full year" mayqel *I love maltz* qunen'oS

On 2/8/2019 9:47 AM, De'vID wrote:

On Fri, 8 Feb 2019 at 15:30, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name <mailto:sustel@trimboli.name>> wrote:

As for the original question, I agree with those who say that the *tlhoS* in *tlhoS wa' ben qaSpu' wanI'* incorrectly tries to apply itself to the noun phrase *wa' ben.* I like mayqel's solution of *wa' ben HochHom qaSpu' wanI':* simple and accurate, though I feel a little uncomfortable about having "most of" a particular moment in time. I wonder if one could say *wa' HochHom*/almost one/ as in *wa' HochHom ben qaSpu' wanI'.* I wouldn't feel comfortable using that either, but it does seem to follow all the rules.

Imprecise time expressions are always a challenge.

What about {wa' ben tugh [qaSpu' wanI']} "one year ago it will have happened soon"? Or is the combination of {wa' ben} with {tugh} weird?

I think it's weird. We've had the discussion of using these relative time expressions before, though I don't think we have an official answer. Can you make the *tugh* apply to a specified point in time instead of the current time? Dunno. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name

Remember that Worf told us, “Klingons may be inaccurate, but they are never approximate.” I honestly believe that “Almost a year ago” is vague and adds very little to the sentence. {qaSpu’. Daqaw’a’?} {qaSpu’ ‘ej vIlIjQo’!} The significance is not that it’s almost a year ago. The significance is that it happened, and you have not forgotten it. How will having it be a year ago add meaning to the occurrence when that time threshold occurs? You are assuming a significance to the concept of an anniversary that may be gibberish to a Klingon. If you really want to give it a time stamp because the time of the event is important, then put the effort into making your time stamp more accurate. Klingon has no equivalent to English’s rich collection of vague terms, from: one or two a couple a very few a few quite a few more than a few sort of a lot a lot quite a lot many a whole lot a shitload almost too many too many way too many Instead, they prefer to just use a number. Nobody cares if the number is exactly correct, so long as it is a specific number that gives them a sense of scope and scale, as in suggesting a number of throats that can be cut in one night by a running man. A Klingon would not say, “Almost a thousand throats can be cut in one night by a running man.” Really. I know that SuStel, whose opinion and skill I respect, doesn’t like these cultural arguments, but the truth is, language and culture are linked, and as Worf has explained, this specific aversion to vagueness is a core Klingon contrast to human culture. If you want to learn a language, you have to put your head into the culture, at least enough to not suffer angst trying to translate something that really doesn’t fit the language because it doesn’t fit the culture. What was that early Klingonist quote describing human language? “Vague, wittering, and indecisive.” This is something you should work on avoiding. charghwI’ ‘utlh

On Feb 8, 2019, at 11:43 AM, Alan Anderson <qunchuy@alcaco.net> wrote:

On Feb 8, 2019, at 9:47 AM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com <mailto:de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com>> wrote: What about {wa' ben tugh [qaSpu' wanI']} "one year ago it will have happened soon"? Or is the combination of {wa' ben} with {tugh} weird?

“Weird” is a good word for it. I understand what it is trying to mean, but I’m not convinced it’s doing it properly.

The other way around doesn’t feel as wrong or strained: {tugh wa'ben [qaSpu']} “soon it will have happened one year ago.” It’s not exactly the same idea, but it describes the same situation. I think that provides my answer to the “ordering and scope” question.

-- ghunchu'wI' _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

On 2/8/2019 7:22 PM, nIqolay Q wrote:

On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 6:08 PM Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com <mailto:willmartin2@mac.com>> wrote:

Remember that Worf told us, “Klingons may be inaccurate, but they are never approximate.”

*Dochmey law' jatlhpu' wo'rIv. *This information was provided in CK in the context of Klingon punctuality and telling hourly time. There, it makes sense in the context that if a Klingon tells you they'll meet you at 1500 hours, they will meet you at 1500 hours, not 1455 or 1505. It makes less sense to generalize it to all Klingon behavior all the time. Thanks to this collection of Star Trek shooting scripts <http://www.st-minutiae.com/resources/scripts/>, I /know/ it doesn't apply to Klingon behavior all the time:

I honestly believe that “Almost a year ago” is vague and adds very little to the sentence. {qaSpu’. Daqaw’a’?} {qaSpu’ ‘ej vIlIjQo’!} The significance is not that it’s almost a year ago. The significance is that it happened, and you have not forgotten it. How will having it be a year ago add meaning to the occurrence when that time threshold occurs? You are assuming a significance to the concept of an anniversary that may be gibberish to a Klingon.

The existence of the words *DISjaj* and *qoS* suggests otherwise.

Thanks for the list (snipped). That's exactly what I'm talking about. Regarding drawing linguistic conclusions based on cultural stereotypes: The French are a romantic people. French is commonly referred to as the language of love. Therefore you can't really say "I hate you" in French. In a culture of love, why would anyone want to say that? What does it bring to the conversation? Russians are a blunt and serious people. When you speak Russian, you can't really express joy or subtlety; it just doesn't fit, culturally. Expressions of happiness will just make Russians look at you like you're crazy. The Japanese prize politeness to a degree not seen in the Western world. When you try to translate Japanese to English, it always sounds impossibly polite and formal. When trying to speak Japanese, you always have to be polite. There are no insults in Japanese except polite ones. These are exaggerated examples, but they should make the point: you can't determine the grammar or expressions of a language just by citing the cultural stereotypes of the people who speak it. Worf says "A Klingon may be inaccurate, but he is never approximate." This doesn't mean that when telling a story about some time in the past you have to tell the exact time or shut up. It means when precision is called for, you use it. If you walk into a shop to buy fifty ion triggers, you'd better tell the shop owner that you want to buy fifty ion triggers, not that you want "some ion whatchamacallits." But if you're telling a story about what happened to you last year, if the exact date is not important, then it's perfectly fine to say "last year" or "almost a year ago." That's not a situation that calls for accuracy. Therefore if you can find a way to say it in Klingon, it's sayable. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name

I have been misunderstood. I do not mean to imply that you have to say a number which is exactly accurate. I mean that you need to say a number. You need to state a number that gives one a sense of scope and scale of what you are measuring. We have lots of examples among the canon of just this sort of thing. Do we really mean exactly 1,000 throats can be cut in one night by a running man? Of course not. But we are not going to say, “Nearly 1,000 throats...” or “About 1,000 throats,” or “A little over 1,000 throats.” We are going to say, “1,000 throats”. And we are going to say “A year ago” or “11 months ago”. We are not going to say, “Almost a year ago”. We don’t care if the measurement we give isn’t exactly accurate. We do care that we are not vague about what that number might be. We are decisive. We grab a number that is close enough and we use it. We don’t use vague, wittering, indecisive terms to almost describe the time period. And I don’t care what Worf says when he is speaking English. This is irrelevant. Sent from my iPad

On Feb 8, 2019, at 10:58 PM, Daniel Dadap <daniel@dadap.net> wrote:

...

On Feb 8, 2019, at 19:56, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

Worf says "A Klingon may be inaccurate, but he is never approximate."

It is possible, then, that this statement may be inaccurate. _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

tugh malop. qatlh? wa’ ben qaS wanI’ le’. Sent from my iPad

On Feb 9, 2019, at 12:10 AM, Alan Anderson <qunchuy@alcaco.net> wrote:

...

On Feb 8, 2019, at 11:23 PM, Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com> wrote: And we are going to say “A year ago” or “11 months ago”. We are not going to say, “Almost a year ago”.

If I want to let people know that the one-year anniversary of an event worthy of celebration is looming, I don’t see why I wouldn’t tell them that it happened almost a year ago. I might phrase it in a different way because of the constraints of language, but there’s nothing in either my real-life culture or the fictional Star Trek Klingons’ culture that constrains me from saying it at all.

-- ghunchu'wI' _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

In all of the script lines, Worf is speaking English, which he speaks natively, not Klingon. Hence none of them support any thesis about Klingon, and barely apply to Klingons, given how Worf was raised. lay'tel SIvten On Fri, Feb 8, 2019, 18:22 nIqolay Q <niqolay0@gmail.com wrote:

On Fri, Feb 8, 2019 at 6:08 PM Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com> wrote:

...

Remember that Worf told us, “Klingons may be inaccurate, but they are never approximate.”

*Dochmey law' jatlhpu' wo'rIv. *This information was provided in CK in the context of Klingon punctuality and telling hourly time. There, it makes sense in the context that if a Klingon tells you they'll meet you at 1500 hours, they will meet you at 1500 hours, not 1455 or 1505. It makes less sense to generalize it to all Klingon behavior all the time. Thanks to this collection of Star Trek shooting scripts <http://www.st-minutiae.com/resources/scripts/>, I *know* it doesn't apply to Klingon behavior all the time:

TNG: "Timescape"

...

RIKER: How long until our rendezvous with Captain Picard? WORF: *Approximately thirteen hours.*

TNG: "Birthright, Part 1" WORF: The foliage is very dense. It will take me *approximately twelve hours* to reach the camp. I will have to travel during the night.

TNG: "Homeward" WORF: I am picking up faint life signs *approximately two-hundred meters* from my position. I am heading toward them.

TNG: "Firstborn" RIKER: How long would it take us to reach the Kalla system? WORF: *Approximately sixteen hours.*

TNG: "A Matter of Time" RIKER: Dimensions, Worf? WORF: *Approximately five meters* in length, sir.

TNG: "Rightful Heir" GOWRON: What kind of fools do you have working for you, Picard? The imposter's been aboard for *nearly a day*.

DS9: "Children of Time" WORF: There are several settlements scattered across the southern peninsula. I'm reading *approximately eight thousand inhabitants*... they appear to be human.

DS9: "Call to Arms" WORF: Weapons ready. The Dominion fleet will be in range in *approximately five minutes*.

DS9: "Once More Unto The Breach" MARTOK: I've hated his name for *almost thirty years*. I've dreamt of the moment when I'd finally see him stripped of his rank and title...

I honestly believe that “Almost a year ago” is vague and adds very little

...

to the sentence. {qaSpu’. Daqaw’a’?} {qaSpu’ ‘ej vIlIjQo’!} The significance is not that it’s almost a year ago. The significance is that it happened, and you have not forgotten it. How will having it be a year ago add meaning to the occurrence when that time threshold occurs? You are assuming a significance to the concept of an anniversary that may be gibberish to a Klingon.

The existence of the words *DISjaj* and *qoS* suggests otherwise.

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On Sat, Feb 9, 2019, 9:44 AM De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com wrote:

Whatever view you may think a hypothetical Klingon might have on the significance or insignificance of anniversaries, that an event happened "almost a year ago" is specifically important in the context of the conversation I was having. You're arguing about an answer to a different question than the one I asked.

This is important. We shouldn't argue over why one of us picks a specific translation over another. We can ask, and we can discuss, but we should not judge the motivation behind others speech. People are allowed to present their translations from the point of view of "This is what I believe a Klingon would say" and no one can say they are right or wrong, because we have no way to go and check. This is all just opinions, not facts, and arguing about opinions of a fictional universe is pointless. Instead, we should just accept that motivations differ between speakers and move on to focusing on the language being presented. If you think it can be better translated or phrased, just present that translation. Let the person who asked the question decide which answer they prefer. As long as they are all grammatical, then they are all valid answers. qurgh List Admin

Let me be very clear about this: Klingon is not my language, and I am not trying to stop anyone from saying vague, wittering, indecisive things using the language. That doesn’t mean that I won’t weigh in with what I honestly think is an important link between the culture and language, because if you want to ignore the fictitious world that has a race in it that speaks this language and just be a guy who speaks it, you still have to consider that the guy who created the language was intentionally building a framework of language intended to be used by a culture that had certain characteristics. In other words, I’m trying to explain to you why this phrase is particularly difficult to translate. I’m suggesting that if you want to say what you are trying to say, there is a way to do it, even though you don’t like it because it doesn’t directly translate into the English equivalent. Okrand has compromised a lot because the people who paid him to create the language and who continue to pay him to translate stuff are obviously less sensitive to his intentional design of the language to fit his understanding of the culture than he would prefer. The classic example was his focused intent on eliminating the verb “to be”, building that function into other constructions through adjectival/stative verbs, and the use of pronouns as verbs and the use of the topicalizer noun suffix if you have to a second noun that otherwise doesn’t have a grammatical reason to be there..., and then the director of the movie he was working on turned to him and said, “Give me, ’To be, or not to be.’” The director is his boss. The paycheck comes from the boss. You need to make the boss happy. I think that the reason we are having so much trouble translating “Almost a year ago,” is that it is fundamentally counter to the culture, and so there isn’t a good grammatical tool handy to translate that phrase. Yes, you can do it, but note that so far, nobody has managed to do it in a way that everyone can agree is grammatically correct and clearly understood. Yes, Okrand came up with {HochHom} to satisfy a translation request by someone who paid him to translate something that Klingon, up to this point, lacked the vocabulary for. So, there’s a dent in this “may be inaccurate, but is never approximate”, intentional design of the language. But it’s a very tiny tool with limited scope. It doesn’t clearly solve our specific translation problem. He could declare that {benHom} means “Almost a year ago” and {ben’a’} is “More than a year ago”. Snap his finger and it’s magically true. Meanwhile, the rest of us can’t do that. We have to wait for tools from him. Note that, unlike the movies or publishers, we do not pay him to do this. So, how can we work with this idea of communicating from a Klingon cultural bias? Think of it as an example of analog vs. digital thinking. You could check your tire pressure with an analog meter or a digital one. The mechanism doing the measuring is probably not very accurate. In most cases, you are internally blowing up a balloon or pushing a piston against a spring, and in both cases, it might be off by a couple of psi. Meanwhile, one device shows you an analog dial or slide readout, while the other gives you a digital display, pretending to be more accurate than it is. If both were perfectly accurate, then the analog version would actually give you a more accurate display, unless the digital one had multiple decimal places, but the readout on the digital one seems more precise because nothing follows that last digit, and you don’t even know if it gives you an average rounding or integer lopping off of values. English favors analog readout. You can feel the weight of the difference between a couple and a few, or a very few, or quite a few, or kind of a lot, or a lot, or a whole lot, etc. Klingon doesn’t do that. Instead, if there are six or eight of something, you say six, or you say seven, or you say eight, and it doesn’t matter if you are right or wrong. You are decisively stating a number that is in the ballpark — that gives the person you are talking to a sense of scope and scale. And you are done. You don’t worry about, gee, that’s not really as accurate as it sounds. In English, we are afraid to commit to a number that might not be quite accurate, so we want to weight it with a vague suggestion that includes the entire range of what the true number might be. Heaven forbid we say a wrong, specific number. In American Sign Language, all the (except the verb “to be”) signs exist for me to say, “My brother is angry because he asked me to help him with his homework and I said, 'No.’” Meanwhile, this conflicts with Deaf culture in several ways. They’d say, “My brother (point to a space representing my brother) angry. Why? (sign for past) (step to position indicated to represent my brother) (make generic request sign loosely translated as “Would you mind”) (directional you-me) Help (raise eyebrows as equivalent of Klingon {qar’a’?}) (step back to my original position) No.” Meanwhile, it violates Deaf culture for me to deny a request without accompanying the “no” with an alternative option (Why not ask Mom?), or a reason why I’m saying, “No.” (I don’t know algebra any better than you do.) If I don’t understand these cultural norms of communication, then I’m not really using American Sign Language. I’m using Signed English, which is a great way to be ignored by a Deaf person. Do you want to speak Klingon well? If so, make the best use of the tools the language offers, and lean in toward what limited understanding we have of the culture. It’s a language, not a code, and culture is the main reason that translation between any two languages is challenging. Better translations are done by those who understand both cultures. charghwI’ ‘utlh

On Feb 9, 2019, at 10:45 AM, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius@gmx.de> wrote:

Am 09.02.2019 um 15:43 schrieb De'vID:

...

As others have pointed out, just because there's a stereotype about a *culture* doesn't mean that you can't say things in the *language* of that culture which go against that stereotype. [...] "almost a year ago" is specifically important in the context of the conversation I was having. You're arguing about an answer to a different question than the one I asked.

Indeed. And nobody has given an answer to the question, which I think is still interesting to know.

-- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonisch.de http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/StarTrekDiscovery _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

On Feb 9, 2019, at 19:30, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

He didn't get rid of to be because of a profound connection to Klingon culture.

He didn’t “get rid” of “to be”. There was never any “to be” to get rid of. Many languages on Earth also lack copula verbs, and the lack or presence of such verbs is no more reflective of culture on Qo'noS than it is on Earth. Okrand made many decisions about the language, and while many of them were culturally motivated (e.g. phrasing things that would be “which” questions as commands - “paq DalaDbogh yIngu'!”), most of them weren’t. While I’d be happy to accept that things like the qualification suffixes, or grammatical gender being based on ability to use speech (or being a body part) have something to do with Klingon culture, I think it would be a stretch to claim that things like SVO, agglutination, lack of tense, etc., are reflective of culture.

Sure, I could say “didn’t add” instead of “got rid of.” It doesn’t change the point. I don’t think “got rid of” is really wrong, anyway. Okrand has told the story many times, and it’s always framed in terms of him wanting there to be no “to be,” not that “to be” never entered into it. His deliberate avoidance is along the lines of “English has ‘to be.’ I want to make it different, so no ‘to be.’” To me, that’s getting rid of “to be.” Rejecting it. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name From: Daniel Dadap Sent: Saturday, February 9, 2019 11:01 PM To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] ordering and scope of adverbials relative totimestamps On Feb 9, 2019, at 19:30, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote: He didn't get rid of to be because of a profound connection to Klingon culture. He didn’t “get rid” of “to be”. There was never any “to be” to get rid of. Many languages on Earth also lack copula verbs, and the lack or presence of such verbs is no more reflective of culture on Qo'noS than it is on Earth. Okrand made many decisions about the language, and while many of them were culturally motivated (e.g. phrasing things that would be “which” questions as commands - “paq DalaDbogh yIngu'!”), most of them weren’t. While I’d be happy to accept that things like the qualification suffixes, or grammatical gender being based on ability to use speech (or being a body part) have something to do with Klingon culture, I think it would be a stretch to claim that things like SVO, agglutination, lack of tense, etc., are reflective of culture.

A relative clause as a time stamp? Novel? Yes. And clever. I don’t know that it is disallowed, but I’m pretty sure it has no peer in canon. It boldly goes. I’ll give it that. Sent from my iPhone. Will

On Feb 9, 2019, at 10:08 PM, nIqolay Q <niqolay0@gmail.com> wrote:

...

On Sat, Feb 9, 2019 at 6:26 PM Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com> wrote:

In other words, I’m trying to explain to you why this phrase is particularly difficult to translate.

The reason this phrase is particularly difficult to translate is because Maltz hasn't provided a word or idiom for referring to "almost a period of time". There are, after all, plenty of phrases that would be utterly taboo for a Klingon to utter that we can translate easily: tera'nganpu' SuvvIp qeylIS. The opening to TKW points out that aphorisms aren't always universal within their culture, and might be contradicted in other contexts by another belief or aphorism. I don't see why this same logic wouldn't apply to a remark Worf makes in the context of Klingon punctuality.

It makes sense that a Klingon would try to avoid being approximate when telling you that a meeting is at such-and-such a time, because that connotes indecisiveness or an inability to control one's schedule. But there's no such indecisiveness when talking about something being "almost thirty years ago" or "approximately five meters". They're not leaving off the however-many decimal places because they can't make up their mind. They're leaving them off because the order of magnitude of the thing in question is what's important to the conversation, not the exact dimensions.

As for the original topic, one idea might be to use a phrase like wa' tlhoS naQbogh ben One almost-complete year ago. I'm not sure of the best way to use that construction for other "almost" measurements.

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On Feb 9, 2019, at 10:38 PM, Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com> wrote:

If I’m so wrong, why is this simple phrase so hard to translate?

It’s not hard to translate the idea. It’s hard to translate the *words*, because we don’t know a way to describe a noun as “almost” something. -- ghunchu'wI'

If telling people that they’re vague, wittering, and indecisive is your style, it probably deserves to be cramped. You still haven’t told us the source of the cultural rules you’re citing. Where do we find all this about being precise to represent a ballpark? How did it come to be incorporated into the structure of the language presented in TKD? -- SuStel http://trimboli.name From: Will Martin Sent: Saturday, February 9, 2019 10:38 PM To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] ordering and scope of adverbials relative totimestamps You keep saying what I can’t or shouldn’t say, suggesting that I am cramping everyone’s style, telling them what they cannot say in the language.  You cramp my style telling me what I can’t say.  I’m just trying to explain why I think this particular kind of vague time stamp is so hard to translate in a way that we can generally agree on, and suggest an alternative: Skip the effort at translating an analog English phrase into Klingon by embracing its apparently digital nature.  If I’m so wrong, why is this simple phrase so hard to translate? Sent from my iPhone.  charghwI’ ‘utlh On Feb 9, 2019, at 10:25 PM, Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com> wrote: A relative clause as a time stamp? Novel? Yes. And clever. I don’t know that it is disallowed, but I’m pretty sure it has no peer in canon. It boldly goes. I’ll give it that.  Sent from my iPhone.  Will On Feb 9, 2019, at 10:08 PM, nIqolay Q <niqolay0@gmail.com> wrote: On Sat, Feb 9, 2019 at 6:26 PM Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com> wrote: In other words, I’m trying to explain to you why this phrase is particularly difficult to translate. The reason this phrase is particularly difficult to translate is because Maltz hasn't provided a word or idiom for referring to "almost a period of time". There are, after all, plenty of phrases that would be utterly taboo for a Klingon to utter that we can translate easily: tera'nganpu' SuvvIp qeylIS. The opening to TKW points out that aphorisms aren't always universal within their culture, and might be contradicted in other contexts by another belief or aphorism. I don't see why this same logic wouldn't apply to a remark Worf makes in the context of Klingon punctuality. It makes sense that a Klingon would try to avoid being approximate when telling you that a meeting is at such-and-such a time, because that connotes indecisiveness or an inability to control one's schedule. But there's no such indecisiveness when talking about something being "almost thirty years ago" or "approximately five meters". They're not leaving off the however-many decimal places because they can't make up their mind. They're leaving them off because the order of magnitude of the thing in question is what's important to the conversation, not the exact dimensions. As for the original topic, one idea might be to use a phrase like wa' tlhoS naQbogh ben One almost-complete year ago. I'm not sure of the best way to use that construction for other "almost" measurements. _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org