moon ph(r)ases, new adverbial {loQHa'}
(p. 181, line 31) {chu'DI' maS 'ej qaStaHvIS ram} "On the night of the new moon" De'vID: Not even every Terran language refers to the first lunar phase (opposite of a "full" moon) as a "new" moon. The issue here is whether this isn't an Anglicism/Terranism, or if Klingons also say the moon is “new". MO:
{chu’DI’ maS}, of course, means “when the moon is/was new” (not “the new moon”), but your point is a good one. Klingons would probably refer to the new moon in the same way they refer to other phases of the moon.
“Full moon” {maS’e’ So’bogh pagh} is “moon that nothing hides.” “Crescent moon” (pp. 138-139 of paq’batlh) is {maS’e’ loQ So’be’bogh QIb} “moon that a shadow doesn’t slightly hide,” that is, the shadow hides most of the moon, but not all of it. What these have in common is the idea that the moon is fully or partially or not at all hidden. What’s doing/causing the hiding is of less importance. So while using {QIb} when describing phases of the moon is perfectly fine and not at all uncommon, it is not necessary. Another way of referring to a “crescent moon” is {maS loQHa’ So’lu’bogh} “moon that is considerably/appreciably hidden.” And {maS loQ So’lu’bogh} “moon that is slightly hidden” refers to a mostly full moon. Now, back to “new moon.” It follows the same pattern: {maS So’lu’chu’bogh} “moon that is perfectly hidden.” These moon phrases [sic] are descriptions. They’re commonly used, but they’re not frozen forms. So they can be manipulated grammatically. For line 31, p. 181, the idea is it’s the night when the new moon is happening (if a new moon can be said to happen), thus: {qaStaHvIS ram, maS So’lu’chu’DI’} “while the night was occuring, when the moon was perfectly hidden” or, in more natural English, “at night when the moon was new.” (end of message) Note the new adverbial {loQHa'} "considerably, appreciably". -- De'vID
I have just started a new page on the Klingon Language Wiki about the moon phases, and sorted them by visual appearance. Doing so, I noticed that Okrand did make a difference about waning or waxing, the Klingon phrases just describe what the moon looks like. Also, he describes a moon that is "a mostly full moon" as "crescent", but if I got it right, that should be "gibbous". I guess that's one of those small mistakes, because Maltz of course, is not an astronomer. ;-) Please have a look at my page and make corrections where needed. http://klingon.wiki/En/MoonPhases -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.tlhInganHol.com http://klingon.wiki/En/PaqbatlhNews
ghuy'cha'! I should have proofread my message more intensely: there is one word missing that changes the entire meaning. I wanted to say that Okrand did NOT make a difference about waning and waxing. DopDaq qul yIchenmoH QobDI' ghu'. Am 27.05.2022 um 09:47 schrieb Lieven L. Litaer:
I have just started a new page on the Klingon Language Wiki about the moon phases, and sorted them by visual appearance.
Doing so, I noticed that Okrand did make a difference about waning or waxing, the Klingon phrases just describe what the moon looks like.
Also, he describes a moon that is "a mostly full moon" as "crescent", but if I got it right, that should be "gibbous". I guess that's one of those small mistakes, because Maltz of course, is not an astronomer. ;-)
Please have a look at my page and make corrections where needed.
http://klingon.wiki/En/MoonPhases
-- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.tlhInganHol.com http://klingon.wiki/En/PaqbatlhNews _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
-- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.tlhInganHol.com http://klingon.wiki/En/AliceInWonderland
On Fri, 27 May 2022 at 09:47, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius@gmx.de> wrote:
Also, he describes a moon that is "a mostly full moon" as "crescent", but if I got it right, that should be "gibbous". I guess that's one of those small mistakes, because Maltz of course, is not an astronomer. ;-)
Correct, this refers to a gibbous moon. But I don't think he got "crescent" and "gibbous" mixed up. He was talking about two different things in that paragraph:
Another way of referring to a “crescent moon” is {maS loQHa’ So’lu’bogh} “moon that is considerably/appreciably hidden.” And {maS loQ So’lu’bogh} “moon that is slightly hidden” refers to a mostly full moon.
He wrote "another way" of referring to a "crescent moon". This means that {maS loQHa’ So’lu’bogh} is a synonym for {maS’e’ loQ So’be’bogh QIb}. A "moon that is considerably/appreciably hidden" is the same as a “moon that a shadow doesn’t slightly hide". -- De'vID
'oqranD:
maS loQHa' So'lu'bogh maS loQ So'lu'bogh
Shouldn't in both these cases the {maS} be {maS'e'} in order for it to be able to precede the adverb? -- Dana'an https://sacredtextsinklingon.wordpress.com/ Ζεὺς ἦν, Ζεὺς ἐστίν, Ζεὺς ἔσσεται· ὦ μεγάλε Ζεῦ
On Fri, 27 May 2022 at 12:26, D qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
'oqranD:
maS loQHa' So'lu'bogh maS loQ So'lu'bogh
Shouldn't in both these cases the {maS} be {maS'e'} in order for it to be able to precede the adverb?
I think it would be better if {-'e'} is present, but I'm not sure if it's necessary. Maybe someone else can clarify. TKD section 6.7 says "The adverbial may actually follow the object noun (but still precede the verb) when the object noun is topicalized by means of the noun suffix {-'e'}", but it doesn't say it can't do so if {-'e'} is absent. So at least it's not explicitly ruled out in TKD. I guess someone will now have to pull up all the relevant info on head nouns and adverbials in relative clauses revealed since TKD to justify one way or the other whether {-'e'} is required here. Dr. Okrand also wrote that these are "descriptions. They’re commonly used, but they’re not frozen forms. So they can be manipulated grammatically." I imagine that, if they were actually to be used in a sentence, you'd have to put the {loQ[Ha']} after the {maS} to make it clear that it's, e.g., {maS['e'] loQ So'lu'bogh vIlegh} "I see the slightly-hidden moon" and not {loQ maS So'lu'bogh vIlegh} "I slightly see the hidden moon". -- De'vID
De'vID:
TKD section 6.7 says "The adverbial may actually follow the object noun (but still precede the verb) when the object noun is topicalized by means of the noun suffix {-'e'}", but it doesn't say it can't do so if {-'e'} is absent. So at least it's not explicitly ruled out in TKD. I guess someone will now have to pull up all the relevant info on head nouns and adverbials in relative clauses revealed since TKD to justify one way or the other whether {-'e'} is required here.
That is an exception to the main rule that adverbials precede the object. So it is ruled out by the main rule. Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio ------- Original Message ------- On Friday, May 27th, 2022 at 14.26, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, 27 May 2022 at 12:26, D qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
'oqranD:
maS loQHa' So'lu'bogh maS loQ So'lu'bogh
Shouldn't in both these cases the {maS} be {maS'e'} in order for it to be able to precede the adverb?
I think it would be better if {-'e'} is present, but I'm not sure if it's necessary. Maybe someone else can clarify.
TKD section 6.7 says "The adverbial may actually follow the object noun (but still precede the verb) when the object noun is topicalized by means of the noun suffix {-'e'}", but it doesn't say it can't do so if {-'e'} is absent. So at least it's not explicitly ruled out in TKD. I guess someone will now have to pull up all the relevant info on head nouns and adverbials in relative clauses revealed since TKD to justify one way or the other whether {-'e'} is required here.
Dr. Okrand also wrote that these are "descriptions. They’re commonly used, but they’re not frozen forms. So they can be manipulated grammatically." I imagine that, if they were actually to be used in a sentence, you'd have to put the {loQ[Ha']} after the {maS} to make it clear that it's, e.g., {maS['e'] loQ So'lu'bogh vIlegh} "I see the slightly-hidden moon" and not {loQ maS So'lu'bogh vIlegh} "I slightly see the hidden moon".
--
De'vID
On Fri, 27 May 2022 at 14:25, Iikka Hauhio <fergusq@protonmail.com> wrote:
De'vID:
TKD section 6.7 says "The adverbial may actually follow the object noun (but still precede the verb) when the object noun is topicalized by means of the noun suffix {-'e'}", but it doesn't say it can't do so if {-'e'} is absent. So at least it's not explicitly ruled out in TKD. I guess someone will now have to pull up all the relevant info on head nouns and adverbials in relative clauses revealed since TKD to justify one way or the other whether {-'e'} is required here.
That is an exception to the main rule that adverbials precede the object. So it is ruled out by the main rule.
In TKD section 5.4 it says "These words [i.e., adverbials] usually come at the beginning of a sentence and describe the manner of the activity." (We usually interpret "sentence" here to mean "clause", which includes relative clauses.) It says "usually", not "always". The sentence in TKD 6.7 gives one exception, but possibly there are other exceptions. Since more information has been revealed about relative clauses and head nouns since TKD was published, it may be the case that other exceptions have been revealed, which was why I said I wasn't sure about it. But I can't think of or locate any information about such exceptions myself, so I am inclined to agree with you that this is an error or oversight. -- De'vID
The thing about {-‘e’} is that it seems to be used for both Focus and Topic. My limited understanding is that Focus can happen for any noun in any (not otherwise marked with some other Type 5 suffix) role in a sentence, but there is no grammatical place for Focus in a sentence independent of the other role of that noun, but Topic can be a grammatical function in the sentence separate from subject or object. Topic can be the only reason the noun is in that sentence. [Topic: Soldiers in the galaxy] You are the boldest! For me, that gives an adverbial good reason to follow a noun with {-‘e’} on it because as the topic, that noun is not really part of the main clause to which the adverbial is applied. Maybe the noun with {-‘e’} isn’t an object of the verb at all. This is confusing because SOMETIMES, the Focus noun is object of the verb and other times the Topic noun is not object of the verb. That’s how it seems to me, anyway. pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)
On May 27, 2022, at 8:24 AM, Iikka Hauhio <fergusq@protonmail.com> wrote:
De'vID: TKD section 6.7 says "The adverbial may actually follow the object noun (but still precede the verb) when the object noun is topicalized by means of the noun suffix {-'e'}", but it doesn't say it can't do so if {-'e'} is absent. So at least it's not explicitly ruled out in TKD. I guess someone will now have to pull up all the relevant info on head nouns and adverbials in relative clauses revealed since TKD to justify one way or the other whether {-'e'} is required here. That is an exception to the main rule that adverbials precede the object. So it is ruled out by the main rule.
Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio
------- Original Message ------- On Friday, May 27th, 2022 at 14.26, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, 27 May 2022 at 12:26, D qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com <mailto:mihkoun@gmail.com>> wrote: 'oqranD:
maS loQHa' So'lu'bogh maS loQ So'lu'bogh
Shouldn't in both these cases the {maS} be {maS'e'} in order for it to be able to precede the adverb?
I think it would be better if {-'e'} is present, but I'm not sure if it's necessary. Maybe someone else can clarify.
TKD section 6.7 says "The adverbial may actually follow the object noun (but still precede the verb) when the object noun is topicalized by means of the noun suffix {-'e'}", but it doesn't say it can't do so if {-'e'} is absent. So at least it's not explicitly ruled out in TKD. I guess someone will now have to pull up all the relevant info on head nouns and adverbials in relative clauses revealed since TKD to justify one way or the other whether {-'e'} is required here.
Dr. Okrand also wrote that these are "descriptions. They’re commonly used, but they’re not frozen forms. So they can be manipulated grammatically." I imagine that, if they were actually to be used in a sentence, you'd have to put the {loQ[Ha']} after the {maS} to make it clear that it's, e.g., {maS['e'] loQ So'lu'bogh vIlegh} "I see the slightly-hidden moon" and not {loQ maS So'lu'bogh vIlegh} "I slightly see the hidden moon".
-- De'vID
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Okrand is not an astronomer, and we don’t know how standardized his English terms for moon phases are. Maltz is also not an astronomer. Terms for Moon phases are illogical and arbitrary. Note that when you look at what is a ½ illuminated Moon, we call it a Quarter Moon, because it is 1/4 of the way through a full cycle, not because it is 1/4 illuminated. It’s half illuminated. The logic that calls a Full Moon a Full Moon (fully illuminated) could call a Quarter Moon a “Half Moon”, but there is no phase of the moon known as “Half Moon”. We could easily call a New Moon an Empty Moon by the same logic that calls the Full Moon “Full". Waxing and Waning refer to which direction the change is happening — something you can’t see. You only know this by tracking the changes in the phase of the moon, or by noting the time of Moonrise and knowing that a New Moon rises with the Sun, a Quarter Moon rises or sets at Noon, and a Full Moon rises at Sunset (with adjustments for the observer’s latitude). Gibbous is closer to Full than New. Quarter is closer to New than Full. It’s all arbitrary and based, not on the appearance of the Moon, but on it’s timing within the current cycle, which is not obvious (unless you use the Moon Phase face on your Apple Watch, like I do). It’s now a Waning Crescent, as I speak, but three days from now, it will be New, not that it’s all that visible now... We don’t know that Klingons think of their moon, Praxis, that way, and maybe they don’t think about phases at all, now that Praxis is gone. We also don’t know if Klingons have been a multi-planet culture long enough to forget that there is any significance at all to Moon phases, but if you are asking a Klingon how to translate Terran Moon phases, they’ll probably come up with something like what Maltz and Okrand have revealed. It doesn’t map directly. Meanwhile, “Crescent Moon” is not technically a Moon phase. It’s a description of the Moon when it is closer to New than a fully waxed Quarter. A crescent is a shape with a concave boundary. A Gibbous Moon doesn’t have a concave boundary. That’s probably why the description “A little bit not hidden” applies. pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)
On May 27, 2022, at 12:24 AM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:
(p. 181, line 31) {chu'DI' maS 'ej qaStaHvIS ram} "On the night of the new moon"
De'vID: Not even every Terran language refers to the first lunar phase (opposite of a "full" moon) as a "new" moon. The issue here is whether this isn't an Anglicism/Terranism, or if Klingons also say the moon is “new".
MO:
{chu’DI’ maS}, of course, means “when the moon is/was new” (not “the new moon”), but your point is a good one. Klingons would probably refer to the new moon in the same way they refer to other phases of the moon.
“Full moon” {maS’e’ So’bogh pagh} is “moon that nothing hides.”
“Crescent moon” (pp. 138-139 of paq’batlh) is {maS’e’ loQ So’be’bogh QIb} “moon that a shadow doesn’t slightly hide,” that is, the shadow hides most of the moon, but not all of it.
What these have in common is the idea that the moon is fully or partially or not at all hidden. What’s doing/causing the hiding is of less importance. So while using {QIb} when describing phases of the moon is perfectly fine and not at all uncommon, it is not necessary.
Another way of referring to a “crescent moon” is {maS loQHa’ So’lu’bogh} “moon that is considerably/appreciably hidden.” And {maS loQ So’lu’bogh} “moon that is slightly hidden” refers to a mostly full moon.
Now, back to “new moon.” It follows the same pattern: {maS So’lu’chu’bogh} “moon that is perfectly hidden.”
These moon phrases [sic] are descriptions. They’re commonly used, but they’re not frozen forms. So they can be manipulated grammatically.
For line 31, p. 181, the idea is it’s the night when the new moon is happening (if a new moon can be said to happen), thus: {qaStaHvIS ram, maS So’lu’chu’DI’} “while the night was occuring, when the moon was perfectly hidden” or, in more natural English, “at night when the moon was new.”
(end of message)
Note the new adverbial {loQHa'} "considerably, appreciably".
-- De'vID _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On 5/27/2022 3:38 PM, Will Martin wrote:
It’s all arbitrary and based, not on the appearance of the Moon, but on it’s timing within the current cycle
Which means it's not arbitrary. It's just based on a deeper understanding of the moon than just "look up and tell me its shape." -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
Calling it “Full” is based on its appearance. There’s nothing in its status within the cycle that has a reason to be called “Full”. Calling it Quarter is based on its status within the cycle. It has nothing to do with its appearance. Calling it “New” is arbitrary, but you could think of it as the zero point of the cycle, but if it was, then the Full Moon would logically be called the Half Moon, and the fully waned Gibbous would be the Three Quarter Moon. It’s arbitrary. It may be based on a “deeper understanding of the Moon than its appearance, but it’s still abitrary. pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)
On May 27, 2022, at 3:45 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 5/27/2022 3:38 PM, Will Martin wrote:
It’s all arbitrary and based, not on the appearance of the Moon, but on it’s timing within the current cycle
Which means it's not arbitrary. It's just based on a deeper understanding of the moon than just "look up and tell me its shape."
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name
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On 5/27/2022 4:28 PM, Will Martin wrote:
Calling it “Full” is based on its appearance. There’s nothing in its status within the cycle that has a reason to be called “Full”.
Calling it Quarter is based on its status within the cycle. It has nothing to do with its appearance.
Calling it “New” is arbitrary, but you could think of it as the zero point of the cycle, but if it was, then the Full Moon would logically be called the Half Moon, and the fully waned Gibbous would be the Three Quarter Moon.
It’s arbitrary. It may be based on a “deeper understanding of the Moon than its appearance, but it’s still abitrary.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Saying something is arbitrary means there is no reason or pattern to it; it's just based on whim or randomness. But these names are not without reason or pattern and aren't based on whim or randomness. They were named these things for reasons, and the terms have a long linguistic development. What you apparently mean by "arbitrary" is that the names don't conform to what you you happen to think would be the most logical system for naming the phases of the moon. They're not arbitrary in the same way that the silent /gh/ in English /knight/ isn't arbitrary. It's there for a reason, whether or not you know or like the reason. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
On Fri, May 27, 2022 at 7:02 PM SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
Saying something is arbitrary means there is no reason or pattern to it; it's just based on whim or randomness. But these names are not without reason or pattern and aren't based on whim or randomness. They were named these things for reasons, and the terms have a long linguistic development.
There is no consistent pattern to the names of the lunar phases. There are (at least) two separate reasons for each of the names, but there doesn't appear to be a reason for which name is chosen. The choice of whether to describe them based on their instantaneous appearance or based on their phase (!) in the cycle does seem arbitrary. I'll continue to think of them as arbitrary until someone provides a description of the pattern for choosing those names, and/or a reason for calling a half-illuminated view a "quarter" while also calling a fully-illuminated view "full. -- ghunchu'wI'
On Sat, 28 May 2022 at 03:18, Alan Anderson <qunchuy@alcaco.net> wrote:
On Fri, May 27, 2022 at 7:02 PM SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
Saying something is arbitrary means there is no reason or pattern to it; it's just based on whim or randomness. But these names are not without reason or pattern and aren't based on whim or randomness. They were named these things for reasons, and the terms have a long linguistic development.
There is no consistent pattern to the names of the lunar phases. There are (at least) two separate reasons for each of the names, but there doesn't appear to be a reason for which name is chosen. The choice of whether to describe them based on their instantaneous appearance or based on their phase (!) in the cycle does seem arbitrary. I'll continue to think of them as arbitrary until someone provides a description of the pattern for choosing those names, and/or a reason for calling a half-illuminated view a "quarter" while also calling a fully-illuminated view "full.
The lunar phases were not all named at once, but at different points in history. In many languages, the word for "month" is the same as or related to the word for "moon". People obviously observed very early on that the moon goes completely dark on a regular basis and that this could be used to track time. A "new moon" is just a "new month" on lunar calendars Bringing this to the Klingon language, there's no reason for Klingons to call a perfectly hidden moon a "new moon", because their word for moon, {maS}, appears to have nothing to do with their word for month, {jar}. (But their words for month and day, {jar} and {jaj}, seem to be related somehow.) We don't know how Klingon months correspond to lunar phases on {Qo'noS} (do we?), but when the new month starts it would be {chu'DI' jar} if anything, and not {chu'DI' maS}. The next two lunar phases to be noticed are when the moon is completely lit up, or a "full moon", and (probably because it follows the new moon) the "crescent moon". If you ask a child (or probably almost anyone who's not a scientist or an artist) to draw you the moon, you're going to get either a circle or a crescent. Nobody ever draws a gibbous moon or a semicircular moon or a new moon except under special circumstances. Then people who studied the moon's cycles more closely (astronomers, but probably actually astrologers) had to give names to the remaining lunar phases. They would've noticed that the lunar phases are symmetric, so there are actually two kinds of "crescent moon", so then they'd invent terms like "waxing" and "waning". In English, the opposite of a "crescent moon" is a "gibbous moon", a word that nobody uses outside of astronomy, but you have to give it some kind of name, right? (I suppose they could've been called the "three-eighths moon" and "five-eighths moon", but those sound ugly, and it seems more symmetric to call them "waxing" and "waning" something.) Then you're left with the first-quarter moon and the third-quarter moon, so why not just call them that? Some cultures do in fact call those phases the equivalent of "waxing half-moon" and "waning half-moon" (e.g., as Lieven pointed out, German does). So it's not completely arbitrary, though some parts of it are. The expressions "new moon" ("new month") and "full moon" are universal to every culture that's ever used the moon to keep track of the passage of time or looked up at the night sky. Then the "crescent moon" is named for its shape (but whether it's a "sickle" [Sichel in German] or an "eyebrow" [眉 in Chinese] or something else is arbitrary). Then it really breaks down and depends on the culture. In German, for example, the quarters are associated with the middle of the quarter rather than the end as in English. So for example in German, the "erstes Viertel" (first quarter) moon is another name for "zunehmende Sichel" (increasing sickle, i.e., waxing crescent), the "zweites Viertel" (second quarter) moon is what English calls "waxing gibbous", the "drittes Viertel" (third quarter) moon is "waning gibbous", and the "letztes Viertel" (last quarter) moon is "abnehmende Sichel" (decreasing sickle, i.e., waning crescent). What would be called the "first-" and "third-quarter" moons in English are "zunehmender Halbmond" and "abnehmender Halbmond" in German. (By coincidence, in the German system you do see one quarter of the moon in the first quarter and three quarters in the third quarter. But you also see three quarters in the second quarter and one quarter in the last (or fourth) quarter, so it's not based on appearance.) Anyway, what's interesting about this is that Klingons apparently have a very different history of lunar astronomy than does Earth, because their way of describing lunar phases is based completely on appearance, and yet the word for "moon" is not related to the word for "month". -- De'vID
On 5/28/2022 9:25 PM, De'vID wrote:
The lunar phases were not all named at once, but at different points in history.
The English terms /full moon/ and /new moon/ go way back, to Old English and perhaps beyond. The others began to be used in English in about the 15th century.
Then the "crescent moon" is named for its shape (but whether it's a "sickle" [Sichel in German] or an "eyebrow" [眉 in Chinese] or something else is arbitrary).
The word /crescent/ being used here isn't arbitrary. It comes from Latin /luna crescens,/ where it meant "waxing moon." The Latin word that became /crescent/ originally meant to get bigger (compare /crescendo/), to wax. Linking the word /crescent/ to a shape came later because it was being used of the moon. So the term /crescent moon/ doesn't come from its shape; the name of the shape comes from the waxing moon. All of these terms have histories and reasons for being the way they are. Having diverse sources isn't arbitrariness. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
On Sun, 29 May 2022 at 03:58, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
Then the "crescent moon" is named for its shape (but whether it's a "sickle" [Sichel in German] or an "eyebrow" [眉 in Chinese] or something else is arbitrary).
The word *crescent* being used here isn't arbitrary. It comes from Latin *luna crescens,* where it meant "waxing moon." The Latin word that became *crescent* originally meant to get bigger (compare *crescendo*), to wax. Linking the word *crescent* to a shape came later because it was being used of the moon. So the term *crescent moon* doesn't come from its shape; the name of the shape comes from the waxing moon.
Whether the shape is named after this lunar phase or the lunar phase is named after a thing with that shape (sickle, eyebrow) in a given language, my point here was that this lunar phase was the next to be named, after the "new" and "full" moons.
All of these terms have histories and reasons for being the way they are. Having diverse sources isn't arbitrariness.
I think you on the one side and chargwI' and ghunchu'wI' on the other side are arguing two different things. The reason for the name of each lunar phase isn't arbitrary and is based on its historical development. What they seem to be saying is that the switch from using appearance to using the fraction through the cycle for some phases, or how that fraction is defined, is arbitrary. Some languages use appearance where English uses the cycle fraction (e.g., German "Halbmond") or define the cycle differently (e.g., German "erstes Viertel" isn't the same phase as the English "first quarter"). There's no particular reason that English uses "first-" and "third-quarter" instead of "waxing" and "waning half moon", or applies the label "first quarter" to appearance of the moon at the end of the quarter rather than the middle, and if history had been reversed and run forward again, English could've easily gone with the German way of doing it and vice versa. In contrast, I think that isn't true of the terms "new" and "full" moon, which would probably remain the same, or "crescent" moon, which would use a word associated with that shape (whether the word comes from the shape or the other way around). In any case, the Klingon descriptions do not all seem as precise as the English names. {maS So’lu’chu’bogh} "new moon" and {maS’e’ So’bogh pagh} "full moon" seem to indicate exact points in the lunar cycle, but {maS’e’ loQ So’be’bogh QIb} / {maS['e'] loQHa’ So’lu’bogh} "crescent moon" (“moon that a shadow doesn’t slightly hide" / "moon that is considerably/appreciably hidden") and {maS['e'] loQ So’lu’bogh} "mostly full moon" (“moon that is slightly hidden”) could just as well refer to anything in a range that fits those descriptions. And we didn't get any information on what Klingons would call the half-illuminated moon. I wonder if you could write {maS'e' bID So'lu'bogh} (or {maS'e' bID So'lu'be'bogh})? -- De'vID
SuStel:
All of these terms have histories and reasons for being the way they are. Having diverse sources isn't arbitrariness.
They are not completely arbitrary, but they are quite arbitrary. It's true that there are reasons for choosing the moon phrase names that English has, but there are other possible names that also have good reasons, and the choice between them and the current names is somewhat arbitrary (as De'vID has pointed out, other cultures have chosen different names). You are treating arbitrariness as a binary value while it's not. Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio ------- Original Message ------- On Sunday, May 29th, 2022 at 04.58, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 5/28/2022 9:25 PM, De'vID wrote:
The lunar phases were not all named at once, but at different points in history.
The English terms full moon and new moon go way back, to Old English and perhaps beyond. The others began to be used in English in about the 15th century.
Then the "crescent moon" is named for its shape (but whether it's a "sickle" [Sichel in German] or an "eyebrow" [眉 in Chinese] or something else is arbitrary).
The word crescent being used here isn't arbitrary. It comes from Latin luna crescens, where it meant "waxing moon." The Latin word that became crescent originally meant to get bigger (compare crescendo), to wax. Linking the word crescent to a shape came later because it was being used of the moon. So the term crescent moon doesn't come from its shape; the name of the shape comes from the waxing moon.
All of these terms have histories and reasons for being the way they are. Having diverse sources isn't arbitrariness.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name
DaH paq vIlaDta’: “Another Fine Myth”. The author, Robert Asprin says in the afterword that he was a Klingon. Anybody here know him? pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)
On May 29, 2022, at 7:34 AM, Iikka Hauhio <fergusq@protonmail.com> wrote:
SuStel: All of these terms have histories and reasons for being the way they are. Having diverse sources isn't arbitrariness. They are not completely arbitrary, but they are quite arbitrary. It's true that there are reasons for choosing the moon phrase names that English has, but there are other possible names that also have good reasons, and the choice between them and the current names is somewhat arbitrary (as De'vID has pointed out, other cultures have chosen different names). You are treating arbitrariness as a binary value while it's not.
Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio ------- Original Message ------- On Sunday, May 29th, 2022 at 04.58, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 5/28/2022 9:25 PM, De'vID wrote:
The lunar phases were not all named at once, but at different points in history. The English terms full moon and new moon go way back, to Old English and perhaps beyond. The others began to be used in English in about the 15th century.
Then the "crescent moon" is named for its shape (but whether it's a "sickle" [Sichel in German] or an "eyebrow" [眉 in Chinese] or something else is arbitrary). The word crescent being used here isn't arbitrary. It comes from Latin luna crescens, where it meant "waxing moon." The Latin word that became crescent originally meant to get bigger (compare crescendo), to wax. Linking the word crescent to a shape came later because it was being used of the moon. So the term crescent moon doesn't come from its shape; the name of the shape comes from the waxing moon.
All of these terms have histories and reasons for being the way they are. Having diverse sources isn't arbitrariness.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>
tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On Mon., May 30, 2022, 22:50 Will Martin, <lojmitti7wi7nuv@gmail.com> wrote:
DaH paq vIlaDta’: “Another Fine Myth”.
The author, Robert Asprin says in the afterword that he was a Klingon. Anybody here know him?
vISovbe' 'ach pongDaj vIghov. Klingon Diplomatic Corps cherpu'. -- De'vID
paqDaj vItIv. pIj muHaghmoH. pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)
On May 30, 2022, at 5:17 PM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon., May 30, 2022, 22:50 Will Martin, <lojmitti7wi7nuv@gmail.com <mailto:lojmitti7wi7nuv@gmail.com>> wrote: DaH paq vIlaDta’: “Another Fine Myth”.
The author, Robert Asprin says in the afterword that he was a Klingon. Anybody here know him?
vISovbe' 'ach pongDaj vIghov. Klingon Diplomatic Corps cherpu'.
-- De'vID _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On Mon, May 30, 2022 at 5:17 PM De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon., May 30, 2022, 22:50 Will Martin, <lojmitti7wi7nuv@gmail.com> wrote:
The author, Robert Asprin says in the afterword that he was a Klingon. Anybody here know him?
Actually, he was among the very first Klingons.
We are arguing less about the meaning of the phases of the Moon than about the nature of the word “arbitrary”. My dictionary says, “based on choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.” History has arbitrarily frozen terms concerning the Moon phases at different times for different reasons. I’m not saying that each person talking about the Moon has arbitrary terms. I’m saying that English speaking humanity didn’t follow any reason or system when they picked which words they would apply to the different phases of the Moon. They just arbitrarily picked a term based on one reason and agreed on it, and that term froze, and later they picked a different term for another phase based on some completely different reason, not systematic to the first term, and agreed to freeze the term to that new one, and over time, they collected the terms we use for Moon phases. The terms describe a system, but the terms were not systematically chosen. “New” and “Quarter” share a system that “Full” ignores. “Waxing” and “Waning” are more consistent with “Full” than they are with “New” and “Quarter”. And “Gibbous?” Where TF did “Gibbous” come from? Consider that some of the people in this discussion have replaced the term “Quarter Moon” with “Crescent Moon”, when the current meanings of these terms as I understand them are different. The Quarter Moon is the description of two phases of the Moon between a New Moon and a half-illuminated Moon. And it gets weirder, because the New Moon seems to be of arbitrary duration from a specific instant at the middle of the time it is not illuminated, or as long as it is not illuminated, which is vague because there isn’t really a reliably clocked instant when “AHA! THERE IT IS! THE FIRST SPECK OF ILLUMINATION! THE NEW MOON IS OVER AND IT IS NOW A WAXING QUARTER!” Meanwhile, the Moon Phase app on my Apple Watch gives the New Moon to the day, when more than a day away, and to the hour on the day of the New Moon. I get it, but this is weird. If there’s a thin sliver of illumination, it’s a Quarter Moon. If it’s exactly half illuminated, some might call it a Quarter Moon, or some might call it a Gibbous Moon. We don’t really have a term for the exactly half-illuminated Moon. The half-illuminated Moon is the cusp between the Quarter Moon and the Gibbous Moon. The Gibbous Moon is to the Full Moon as the Quarter Moon is to the New Moon. Waxing and Waning are terms added to Quarter and Gibbous to tell us whether the illuminated part is getting bigger or smaller; whether we’re headed toward a Full Moon or a New Moon next. That’s the terminology used by every Moon phase tracking app I’ve ever used. The Crescent Moon has become a description of an appearance of the Moon, separate from any time-tracking of its phases. It refers to Moon that is partially illuminated, but closer to a New Moon than to a Full Moon. The shape has a concave arc and a convex arc. It’s thickest in the middle, thinning out to points at the end. Interestingly, it’s usually depicted as a roughly 1/4 illuminated Moon (measured as at the equator, 3/4 of the Moon is dark, and 1/4 is illuminated). One thing about Earth’s Moon that affects phases that may or may not be true of Praxis is that the Moon and Sun are visually the same size to people on Earth, and the Earth’s shadow on the Moon during an eclipse is roughly the same size as the Moon. Praxis might never line up with Kronos’s home star to have either kind of eclipse, or if it does, a lunar eclipse might look like a donut, or might be eclipsed for days. Their solar eclipse might be barely noticeable as a slightly dimmed home star, or it might create total darkness across the entire planet for hours. Then again, the Earth’s Moon has the same side facing the Earth at all times, so the only change we have in the appearance of the Moon is the phase based on changes of illumination. Praxis might rotate so that Klingons see different parts of Praxis on different days. These might be recognizably different such that Klingon months would be based on which area of Praxis is facing them instead of which parts of it are illuminated, and this might vary, like Time Zones depending on the observer’s longitude on Kronos. This would be especially true if Praxis were to orbit Kronos tangential to Kronos’s orbit around the home star, since half of Praxis would always be illuminated. There would be no lunar illumination phase. “Is there air? We don’t know!" pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)
On May 28, 2022, at 9:58 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 5/28/2022 9:25 PM, De'vID wrote:
The lunar phases were not all named at once, but at different points in history. The English terms full moon and new moon go way back, to Old English and perhaps beyond. The others began to be used in English in about the 15th century.
Then the "crescent moon" is named for its shape (but whether it's a "sickle" [Sichel in German] or an "eyebrow" [眉 in Chinese] or something else is arbitrary). The word crescent being used here isn't arbitrary. It comes from Latin luna crescens, where it meant "waxing moon." The Latin word that became crescent originally meant to get bigger (compare crescendo), to wax. Linking the word crescent to a shape came later because it was being used of the moon. So the term crescent moon doesn't come from its shape; the name of the shape comes from the waxing moon.
All of these terms have histories and reasons for being the way they are. Having diverse sources isn't arbitrariness.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name <http://trimboli.name/>_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
Except during lunar eclipses (and what's the word or phrase for that), the moon is always half illuminated, even if we can't see all of the lit surface from Earth. We could as easily talk about the left or right moon, depending on which half of the visible face of the moon we can see. stevo On Sun, May 29, 2022 at 7:37 AM Will Martin <lojmitti7wi7nuv@gmail.com> wrote:
We are arguing less about the meaning of the phases of the Moon than about the nature of the word “arbitrary”. My dictionary says, “based on choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.” History has arbitrarily frozen terms concerning the Moon phases at different times for different reasons. I’m not saying that each person talking about the Moon has arbitrary terms. I’m saying that English speaking humanity didn’t follow any reason or system when they picked which words they would apply to the different phases of the Moon. They just arbitrarily picked a term based on one reason and agreed on it, and that term froze, and later they picked a different term for another phase based on some completely different reason, not systematic to the first term, and agreed to freeze the term to that new one, and over time, they collected the terms we use for Moon phases.
The terms describe a system, but the terms were not systematically chosen. “New” and “Quarter” share a system that “Full” ignores. “Waxing” and “Waning” are more consistent with “Full” than they are with “New” and “Quarter”. And “Gibbous?” Where TF did “Gibbous” come from?
Consider that some of the people in this discussion have replaced the term “Quarter Moon” with “Crescent Moon”, when the current meanings of these terms as I understand them are different.
The Quarter Moon is the description of two phases of the Moon between a New Moon and a half-illuminated Moon.
And it gets weirder, because the New Moon seems to be of arbitrary duration from a specific instant at the middle of the time it is not illuminated, or as long as it is not illuminated, which is vague because there isn’t really a reliably clocked instant when “AHA! THERE IT IS! THE FIRST SPECK OF ILLUMINATION! THE NEW MOON IS OVER AND IT IS NOW A WAXING QUARTER!” Meanwhile, the Moon Phase app on my Apple Watch gives the New Moon to the day, when more than a day away, and to the hour on the day of the New Moon. I get it, but this is weird.
If there’s a thin sliver of illumination, it’s a Quarter Moon. If it’s exactly half illuminated, some might call it a Quarter Moon, or some might call it a Gibbous Moon. We don’t really have a term for the exactly half-illuminated Moon. The half-illuminated Moon is the cusp between the Quarter Moon and the Gibbous Moon. The Gibbous Moon is to the Full Moon as the Quarter Moon is to the New Moon.
Waxing and Waning are terms added to Quarter and Gibbous to tell us whether the illuminated part is getting bigger or smaller; whether we’re headed toward a Full Moon or a New Moon next.
That’s the terminology used by every Moon phase tracking app I’ve ever used.
The Crescent Moon has become a description of an appearance of the Moon, separate from any time-tracking of its phases. It refers to Moon that is partially illuminated, but closer to a New Moon than to a Full Moon. The shape has a concave arc and a convex arc. It’s thickest in the middle, thinning out to points at the end. Interestingly, it’s usually depicted as a roughly 1/4 illuminated Moon (measured as at the equator, 3/4 of the Moon is dark, and 1/4 is illuminated).
One thing about Earth’s Moon that affects phases that may or may not be true of Praxis is that the Moon and Sun are visually the same size to people on Earth, and the Earth’s shadow on the Moon during an eclipse is roughly the same size as the Moon. Praxis might never line up with Kronos’s home star to have either kind of eclipse, or if it does, a lunar eclipse might look like a donut, or might be eclipsed for days. Their solar eclipse might be barely noticeable as a slightly dimmed home star, or it might create total darkness across the entire planet for hours.
Then again, the Earth’s Moon has the same side facing the Earth at all times, so the only change we have in the appearance of the Moon is the phase based on changes of illumination. Praxis might rotate so that Klingons see different parts of Praxis on different days. These might be recognizably different such that Klingon months would be based on which area of Praxis is facing them instead of which parts of it are illuminated, and this might vary, like Time Zones depending on the observer’s longitude on Kronos. This would be especially true if Praxis were to orbit Kronos tangential to Kronos’s orbit around the home star, since half of Praxis would always be illuminated. There would be no lunar illumination phase.
“Is there air? We don’t know!"
pItlh
charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)
On May 28, 2022, at 9:58 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 5/28/2022 9:25 PM, De'vID wrote:
The lunar phases were not all named at once, but at different points in history.
The English terms *full moon* and *new moon* go way back, to Old English and perhaps beyond. The others began to be used in English in about the 15th century.
Then the "crescent moon" is named for its shape (but whether it's a "sickle" [Sichel in German] or an "eyebrow" [眉 in Chinese] or something else is arbitrary).
The word *crescent* being used here isn't arbitrary. It comes from Latin *luna crescens,* where it meant "waxing moon." The Latin word that became *crescent* originally meant to get bigger (compare *crescendo*), to wax. Linking the word *crescent* to a shape came later because it was being used of the moon. So the term *crescent moon* doesn't come from its shape; the name of the shape comes from the waxing moon.
All of these terms have histories and reasons for being the way they are. Having diverse sources isn't arbitrariness.
-- SuStelhttp://trimboli.name
_______________________________________________ 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
On Tue, 31 May 2022 at 12:51, MorphemeAddict <lytlesw@gmail.com> wrote:
Except during lunar eclipses (and what's the word or phrase for that),
{maS naptop}
the moon is always half illuminated, even if we can't see all of the lit surface from Earth.
I think you mean from {Qo'noS}.
We could as easily talk about the left or right moon, depending on which half of the visible face of the moon we can see.
That would also depend on where on the planet one is making that observation. (The "left" side of the moon to an observer on the north pole is its "right" side to an observer on the south pole.) -- De'vID
My point here is that on Earth, when we look at the Moon, we are able to perceive a lot of detail that we ignore as we take not of the most obvious changes in the Moon over nightly observations made each month. The surface of the Moon that faces us is constant. The obvious change is the percentage of illumination. We probably named the “Full Moon” before we started using terms referring to the lunar cycle, since it is based on the most obvious limited-time observation. It’s fully illuminated, so it is a Full Moon. At some later time, we wanted more terms to describe other phases of the lunar cycle and arbitrarily chose the zero-illumination point as the zero mark of the cycle, calling that the New Moon, much like we chose midnight as the arbitrary zero point of the 24 hour day. We didn’t bother marking the difference between the two half-illuminated points in the cycle within a single word, calling them both Quarter Moon, differentiating between the two by describing whether it was approaching a Full Moon (Waxing) or a New Moon (Waning). Likely, at some later point, wanting more detailed information for more days in the cycle, the Quarter Moon shifted toward describing all phases of the moon between half illumination and New Moon, and the Gibbous Moon referred to all phases between half illumination and Full Moon, again, adding Waxing and Waning to differentiate the two mirror cycles. This is a very evolved system of descriptions, all based on the most obvious changes in the appearance of the Moon. My point is that Praxis might have features that change more obviously than its illumination. It might not, as the Moon does, always present the same face to the Earth at all times. This is, as I understand it, an uncommon feature of moons, and it can be accomplished two ways. Either, as is the case with the Moon, a difference between the center of mass and center of volume synchronizes the revolutions of its orbit and its rotation, or, unlike the Moon, the rotation is perpendicular to its orbit and the axis shifts in sync with its orbit (as in the North Pole of said moon always pointed toward the planet). In the second case the image of the Moon would always include the same surface area, but that 2-D image of its surface, as observed from the planet, would rotate, unlike what we see of the Moon on Earth. In that case, if the orbit of that moon were tangential to the orbit of the planet, there would be no illumination phases of the moon. The visual image that moon from the surface would always be half-illuminated (like the cusp between Quarter Moon and Gibbous Moon), but the details of visual features of the surface of the moon would change as the moon rotates. Instead of, as on Earth, the same quantity of illumination is visible at all points on the planet on a given day, though the Moon rises and sets at different times of the day depending on the longitude of the observer, different portions of the surface of the moon would be available to people at different latitudes on the planet on a given day, creating a kind of lunar Time Zone that varies depending on longitude. Or far more commonly, the rotation and orbit of the moon might not synchronize, and the features across the moon might be sufficiently dissimilar to be more obvious a change from day to day than the percentage of illumination. Whatever more obviously changes when you look at it is more likely to become a noticed time cycle than the features that less obviously changes. It might be that there are no time cycles that Klingons have ever noted concerning Praxis. If that were true, they wouldn’t have terms for Praxis cycles like we have lunar cycles on Earth. They’d just describe what they see when they look at the moon or the Moon. The few Klingons who make it to Earth might look up, see what is to them a moon, not The Moon, and wonder what the big deal is that makes humans pay any attention to lunar cycles. Ask that Klingon how to translate phases of the Moon, and it might be like asking them the different Klingon words for iPhone and Android Phone, or what the Klingon word is for Toyota Prius or the Klingon vocabulary for the types of clouds we see here in the sky on Earth, like cirrus or cumulus, which may not exist on Kronos. pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)
On Jun 2, 2022, at 5:31 AM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, 31 May 2022 at 12:51, MorphemeAddict <lytlesw@gmail.com <mailto:lytlesw@gmail.com>> wrote: Except during lunar eclipses (and what's the word or phrase for that),
{maS naptop}
the moon is always half illuminated, even if we can't see all of the lit surface from Earth.
I think you mean from {Qo'noS}.
We could as easily talk about the left or right moon, depending on which half of the visible face of the moon we can see.
That would also depend on where on the planet one is making that observation. (The "left" side of the moon to an observer on the north pole is its "right" side to an observer on the south pole.)
-- De'vID _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
Am 27.05.2022 um 21:38 schrieb Will Martin:
The logic that calls a Full Moon a Full Moon (fully illuminated) could call a Quarter Moon a “Half Moon”, but there is no phase of the moon known as “Half Moon”.
Well, just for linguistic interest, that's exactly what they say in German: "Halbmond" is the term for both first and third quarter. Also, the gibbous moon is called "three-quarter moon", so it really describes what we see. But also here, the empty moon is called "new moon".
Meanwhile, “Crescent Moon” is not technically a Moon phase.
Oh really? It even has an entry at Wikipedia. They talk about "waxing crescent" and "waning crescent". -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.tlhInganHol.com http://klingon.wiki/En/MoonPhases
participants (9)
-
Alan Anderson -
D qunen'oS -
De'vID -
Iikka Hauhio -
Lawrence M. Schoen -
Lieven L. Litaer -
MorphemeAddict -
SuStel -
Will Martin