Re: [tlhIngan Hol] ordering and scope of adverbials relative totimestamps
If telling people that their style deserves to be cramped is your style, perhaps your style deserves to be cramped. We are a community of people with varying styles and opinions that all deserve to be heard. Here in the real world, there’s a Constitution that suggests that we have a right to free speech. I don’t remember signing that away when I joined this list. For the record, I’m not interested in telling you to shut up, though it does wear on me a bit to get the sense that you’d deeply enjoy any opportunity to tell me that. I’m glad you are here. You are very skilled at this language, and your posts assisting new people here are often very insightful and helpful to them. I’m not telling you that you can’t translate “Almost a year ago”. Go for it. Show us your solution to this problem instead of repeatedly telling me that I shouldn’t be saying that the language is not well equipped to translate it, and perhaps there’s an intentional reason for that based on something intentional by the language’s creator. The language has a mix of fictional and real world origins to its features. It’s handling of “to be” had less to do with the fictional culture than that the linguist thought it would be interesting. The gender classifications came out of a weird movie editing of a line assigning a whole new subtitle to a filmed scene. The suffix system was created to make a small vocabulary go a long way. The OVS word order was intended to make the language as alien as possible, being the least common word order among the human languages that the linguist was familiar with. Perhaps this fundamental lack of grammatical and vocabulary tools to indicate an approximate time period was an accidental omission for Okrand, but given the line which Okrand either wrote or collaborated on, “A Klingon may be inaccurate, but he is never approximate,” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that it was intentional, and based on Okrand’s take on the cultural character of the Klingons. If nothing else, it gives him an excuse for not addressing the issue. There have been several references to Klingons’ preference for direct speech, without vague, floral niceties that humans are so drawn to include. In our own culture, it is often said that younger people like to text instead of call because they don’t want to waste all that time saying, “Hi, this is George. How are you? I’m fine. Sandy says the new Smurf movie is out and she’s interested. Would you like to come along?” Instead, they text: “Smurf movie: U wanna come?” Maybe this is like that. In English, we feel anxiety about suggesting a specific measurement unless we know for a fact that the measurement is accurate. We have a rich set of vague descriptors that can encompass different vague ranges. We choose the one that fits the vague range that includes the actual value. We are averse to being inaccurate the way that the stereotypical Brit or Japanese person is averse to being embarrassed. Part of the appeal to the Klingon language for me is the way it makes me aware of characteristics of English that I would not have otherwise noticed. Without this “almost a year” problem, I would have understood this detail about English less. It’s not just “the way things are in language”. It’s “the way things are in English”. We’ve got enough evidence to suggest that Klingons perceive this as indecisive and weak, or evasive and suspicious. Klingons are bold. Humans and Klingons alike will give you an exact number if they know the exact number, but a human will give a vague term if they don’t know the exact number, while a Klingon will decisively pick a number that is close enough and be done with it. No anxiety. And if you disagree on the number, then we can fight about it, because, hey, we like fighting. This is as good an excuse as any. Klingons are not averse to conflict. They enjoy it. Given all this, it’s no surprise that there is no simple way to encode the words, “almost a year” into an equivalent Klingon phrase, even if we humans really wish we could. We can express the thought, filtered through Klingon culture, grammar and vocabulary, but we can’t turn the words “almost a year” into a similar collection of Klingon words that can be dropped into any Klingon sentence to replace “almost a year” in any English sentence we’d like to translate into Klingon. Wishing otherwise won’t help. And if you are really offended by trying to figure out why this seems to be the case, well, enjoy being offended. It happens often enough that you do seem to get something out of it. It would be great if we could discuss stuff without the vitriol, but perhaps it’s more Klingon-like to get into each other’s face. Either way, I’m still here. And so are you. We might as well get used to it. charghwI’ ‘utlh Sent from my iPad
On Feb 9, 2019, at 11:34 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
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
tlhoy tIq; laDpu'be'. On 2/10/2019 8:52 AM, Will Martin wrote:
If telling people that their style deserves to be cramped is your style, perhaps your style deserves to be cramped.
We are a community of people with varying styles and opinions that all deserve to be heard. Here in the real world, there’s a Constitution that suggests that we have a right to free speech. I don’t remember signing that away when I joined this list.
For the record, I’m not interested in telling you to shut up, though it does wear on me a bit to get the sense that you’d deeply enjoy any opportunity to tell me that. I’m glad you are here. You are very skilled at this language, and your posts assisting new people here are often very insightful and helpful to them.
I’m not telling you that you can’t translate “Almost a year ago”. Go for it. Show us your solution to this problem instead of repeatedly telling me that I shouldn’t be saying that the language is not well equipped to translate it, and perhaps there’s an intentional reason for that based on something intentional by the language’s creator.
The language has a mix of fictional and real world origins to its features. It’s handling of “to be” had less to do with the fictional culture than that the linguist thought it would be interesting. The gender classifications came out of a weird movie editing of a line assigning a whole new subtitle to a filmed scene. The suffix system was created to make a small vocabulary go a long way. The OVS word order was intended to make the language as alien as possible, being the least common word order among the human languages that the linguist was familiar with.
Perhaps this fundamental lack of grammatical and vocabulary tools to indicate an approximate time period was an accidental omission for Okrand, but given the line which Okrand either wrote or collaborated on, “A Klingon may be inaccurate, but he is never approximate,” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that it was intentional, and based on Okrand’s take on the cultural character of the Klingons. If nothing else, it gives him an excuse for not addressing the issue.
There have been several references to Klingons’ preference for direct speech, without vague, floral niceties that humans are so drawn to include. In our own culture, it is often said that younger people like to text instead of call because they don’t want to waste all that time saying, “Hi, this is George. How are you? I’m fine. Sandy says the new Smurf movie is out and she’s interested. Would you like to come along?” Instead, they text: “Smurf movie: U wanna come?” Maybe this is like that.
In English, we feel anxiety about suggesting a specific measurement unless we know for a fact that the measurement is accurate. We have a rich set of vague descriptors that can encompass different vague ranges. We choose the one that fits the vague range that includes the actual value. We are averse to being inaccurate the way that the stereotypical Brit or Japanese person is averse to being embarrassed.
Part of the appeal to the Klingon language for me is the way it makes me aware of characteristics of English that I would not have otherwise noticed. Without this “almost a year” problem, I would have understood this detail about English less. It’s not just “the way things are in language”. It’s “the way things are in English”.
We’ve got enough evidence to suggest that Klingons perceive this as indecisive and weak, or evasive and suspicious. Klingons are bold. Humans and Klingons alike will give you an exact number if they know the exact number, but a human will give a vague term if they don’t know the exact number, while a Klingon will decisively pick a number that is close enough and be done with it. No anxiety. And if you disagree on the number, then we can fight about it, because, hey, we like fighting. This is as good an excuse as any.
Klingons are not averse to conflict. They enjoy it.
Given all this, it’s no surprise that there is no simple way to encode the words, “almost a year” into an equivalent Klingon phrase, even if we humans really wish we could.
We can express the thought, filtered through Klingon culture, grammar and vocabulary, but we can’t turn the words “almost a year” into a similar collection of Klingon words that can be dropped into any Klingon sentence to replace “almost a year” in any English sentence we’d like to translate into Klingon.
Wishing otherwise won’t help. And if you are really offended by trying to figure out why this seems to be the case, well, enjoy being offended. It happens often enough that you do seem to get something out of it.
It would be great if we could discuss stuff without the vitriol, but perhaps it’s more Klingon-like to get into each other’s face.
Either way, I’m still here. And so are you. We might as well get used to it.
charghwI’ ‘utlh
Sent from my iPad
On Feb 9, 2019, at 11:34 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name <mailto:sustel@trimboli.name>> wrote:
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
_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name
qay’be’. Sent from my iPhone. Will
On Feb 10, 2019, at 12:13 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
tlhoy tIq; laDpu'be'.
On 2/10/2019 8:52 AM, Will Martin wrote: If telling people that their style deserves to be cramped is your style, perhaps your style deserves to be cramped.
We are a community of people with varying styles and opinions that all deserve to be heard. Here in the real world, there’s a Constitution that suggests that we have a right to free speech. I don’t remember signing that away when I joined this list.
For the record, I’m not interested in telling you to shut up, though it does wear on me a bit to get the sense that you’d deeply enjoy any opportunity to tell me that. I’m glad you are here. You are very skilled at this language, and your posts assisting new people here are often very insightful and helpful to them.
I’m not telling you that you can’t translate “Almost a year ago”. Go for it. Show us your solution to this problem instead of repeatedly telling me that I shouldn’t be saying that the language is not well equipped to translate it, and perhaps there’s an intentional reason for that based on something intentional by the language’s creator.
The language has a mix of fictional and real world origins to its features. It’s handling of “to be” had less to do with the fictional culture than that the linguist thought it would be interesting. The gender classifications came out of a weird movie editing of a line assigning a whole new subtitle to a filmed scene. The suffix system was created to make a small vocabulary go a long way. The OVS word order was intended to make the language as alien as possible, being the least common word order among the human languages that the linguist was familiar with.
Perhaps this fundamental lack of grammatical and vocabulary tools to indicate an approximate time period was an accidental omission for Okrand, but given the line which Okrand either wrote or collaborated on, “A Klingon may be inaccurate, but he is never approximate,” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that it was intentional, and based on Okrand’s take on the cultural character of the Klingons. If nothing else, it gives him an excuse for not addressing the issue.
There have been several references to Klingons’ preference for direct speech, without vague, floral niceties that humans are so drawn to include. In our own culture, it is often said that younger people like to text instead of call because they don’t want to waste all that time saying, “Hi, this is George. How are you? I’m fine. Sandy says the new Smurf movie is out and she’s interested. Would you like to come along?” Instead, they text: “Smurf movie: U wanna come?” Maybe this is like that.
In English, we feel anxiety about suggesting a specific measurement unless we know for a fact that the measurement is accurate. We have a rich set of vague descriptors that can encompass different vague ranges. We choose the one that fits the vague range that includes the actual value. We are averse to being inaccurate the way that the stereotypical Brit or Japanese person is averse to being embarrassed.
Part of the appeal to the Klingon language for me is the way it makes me aware of characteristics of English that I would not have otherwise noticed. Without this “almost a year” problem, I would have understood this detail about English less. It’s not just “the way things are in language”. It’s “the way things are in English”.
We’ve got enough evidence to suggest that Klingons perceive this as indecisive and weak, or evasive and suspicious. Klingons are bold. Humans and Klingons alike will give you an exact number if they know the exact number, but a human will give a vague term if they don’t know the exact number, while a Klingon will decisively pick a number that is close enough and be done with it. No anxiety. And if you disagree on the number, then we can fight about it, because, hey, we like fighting. This is as good an excuse as any.
Klingons are not averse to conflict. They enjoy it.
Given all this, it’s no surprise that there is no simple way to encode the words, “almost a year” into an equivalent Klingon phrase, even if we humans really wish we could.
We can express the thought, filtered through Klingon culture, grammar and vocabulary, but we can’t turn the words “almost a year” into a similar collection of Klingon words that can be dropped into any Klingon sentence to replace “almost a year” in any English sentence we’d like to translate into Klingon.
Wishing otherwise won’t help. And if you are really offended by trying to figure out why this seems to be the case, well, enjoy being offended. It happens often enough that you do seem to get something out of it.
It would be great if we could discuss stuff without the vitriol, but perhaps it’s more Klingon-like to get into each other’s face.
Either way, I’m still here. And so are you. We might as well get used to it.
charghwI’ ‘utlh
Sent from my iPad
On Feb 9, 2019, at 11:34 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
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
_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 at 14:52, Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com> wrote:
Perhaps this fundamental lack of grammatical and vocabulary tools to indicate an approximate time period was an accidental omission for Okrand, but given the line which Okrand either wrote or collaborated on, “A Klingon may be inaccurate, but he is never approximate,” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that it was intentional, and based on Okrand’s take on the cultural character of the Klingons. If nothing else, it gives him an excuse for not addressing the issue.
I *do* think that it's unreasonable to think that it was intentional, because the alternative is to believe that Okrand is some sort of omniscient being who has anticipated every use to which the language would eventually be put, when he's stated that he never expected Klingon to take off in the way that it did. For a long time, we also did not know how to do comparisons other than "X is [verb]er than Y". He's subsequently revealed that the comparison formula is rather more flexible than what was described in TKD, allowing for negations ("X is not [verb]er than Y"), equalities, and even ways to imply whether the quality being compared is positive or negative. All of this was done without his having been forced to do so because he had to fit something a Star Trek writer had already written into a show. He simply hadn't thought about it, and then he did. If someone had been inclined, prior to the revelation of that additional information, to argue that Klingon culture favoured comparisons where one thing definitely has more of a quality than another thing, and that the language simply *couldn't* make any other kind of comparison, they'd have been right about that specific point (based on information known at that time), and they'd have been making the same argument that you're now making, but they would've turned out to be wrong about the conclusion that they drew from it. Similarly, the conclusion you have drawn doesn't follow from the evidence you've presented to support it. Your entire claim is based on this one sentence that "Though Klingons are sometimes inaccurate, they are never approximate." You keep coming back to it as if it settled the question. It doesn't, though, because first of all it was said specifically in the context of telling the time (i.e., the hour of the day), and secondly there may be situations in which specifying a time as being shortly before (or after) an event is the least approximate thing you could say. Here's the quote in context: <Klingons have adopted the way most civilized planets in the galaxy tell time. They have twenty-four hour days. "Zero hours" means midnight, "twelve hundred hours" means noon, "nineteen hundred hours" means seven p.m., and so on. Klingons pride themselves on punctuality, so it is important to be precise when referring to time. Though Klingons are sometimes inaccurate, they are never approximate.> The context here is *punctuality*. Instead of saying "in the evening", you should say "7 pm". On that we agree. One might argue that this extends to longer periods of time, outside the context of stating a time to meet, but that would be an *interpretation*. I don't believe that the quote text implies that a Klingon wouldn't say "almost a century" or "most of a decade", when the context has nothing to do with *punctuality*. I especially don't accept that it applies to a time in the past, where punctuality is just completely out of scope (unless we're talking about time travel). The SkyBox example which introduced {HochHom} has already been mentioned, but there's a second one, from the Smithsonian exhibit: {tera' jar Soch, DIS wa' Hut jav Hut, maSDaq SaqmeH Qu' wa'DIch HochHom turlu'taHvIS, wej logh lengwI'pu' pa'mey 'oH Apollo wa'maH wa' ra'ghom bobcho' Columbia'e'.} "The Apollo 11 Command Module, 'Columbia,' was the living quarters for the three-person crew during most of the first manned lunar landing mission in July 1969." Okrand wrote the Klingon translation based on an original English text that he was free to edit. (If you compare the English version of the exhibit and the bilingual one, the English text of the bilingual exhibit had been edited down to leave out unimportant details.) The evidence shows that he was free to leave out the "most" from the English text, but he chose to leave it in both the English and the Klingon. It seems to be perfectly fine to express "most of a [time period]" in Klingon when the context has nothing to do with punctuality. When you're talking about "most of the 23rd century" or "most of the mission", there's no expectation that someone would be punctual, because the context is not about stating a specific time for a purpose. The only reason we can't easily say "almost a year ago" is because of how Klingon has separate words for "year" and "years ago" and "years from now", and we don't know how to modify {ben}. We can certainly say, for example, {wa' DIS HochHom ret}, using {ret} instead of {ben}. Also, I don't really take seriously any claims in Star Trek along the lines of "species X always/never does Y". Spock says Vulcans don't lie (which is obviously a lie). We also find statements about Klingons (translated into Klingon) such as the following in Okrand's works: "No Klingon ever breaks his word", "Klingons never bluff", "Klingons do not faint". Granted, these were originally expressed by Star Trek writers and he merely translated them. But he chose those specific sentences to translate when he could've ignored them. (There are many more things said about Klingons than actually said in Klingon.) Does that mean that the Klingon language has no way to express exaggeration or falsehood, or talk about fainting? Of course not. In the same way, even if Klingons *prefer* directness, it doesn't follow that they *can't* express approximation. There have been several references to Klingons’ preference for direct
speech, without vague, floral niceties that humans are so drawn to include.
But what does this have to do with "almost a year ago"? The "almost" isn't there for social politeness. It's there to distinguish that period of time from other periods such as "long before the anniversary", "on the date of the anniversary", and "in the time after the anniversary". In that specific context, those are the most accurate, most direct, and least approximate labels for the information that matters. -- De'vID
On Feb 11, 2019, at 02:21, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:
"Klingons never bluff"
When {not toj tlhInganpu'} shows up in TKW it’s even accompanied by a note that it might either mean that Klingons really never deceive, or it might mean that Klingons do deceive on occasion, and this is an instance of such deception. (When I quipped about the “inaccurate but never approximate line” as possibly being inaccurate earlier, I was merely trying to make a joke about how that assertion might possibly have been meta like “Klingons never bluff”.) Another point against making sweeping generalizations about Klingon culture based on little evidence is that KGT warns the reader against believing in the “Fiction of Klingon Conformity”. It’s a vast empire, after all, and even if we do take the line about “inaccurate but never approximate” as being indicative of a more general preference towards expressing precision regardless of accuracy, it needn’t hold true universally across all Klingons.
Thank you for your detailed, convincing argument. You put time into this. I respect that. You have presented good specific examples. Your logic is well thought out, and your presentation is not especially aggressive or disrespectful. This is refreshing. I’ll try to learn from this and improve my own arguments to be less disrespectful or unnecessarily confrontational. So, instead of having an idea of why it is so hard to come up with a generic, acceptable way to say this, it now looks like {HochHom} is perhaps our one acceptable tool for giving one vague range of time: That of a near-complete duration. It’s not a very rich set, but it does seem appropriate to the requested phrase, “Almost a year ago”. Well done. There’s still a lack of vocabulary for other vague ranges of duration to match the rich set of options in English. I never intended to suggest that Klingon could not translate English vague time ranges. My intent was to suggest that it is acceptable, in Klingon, to replace a vague fraction of a larger duration with a specific-even-if-innacurate number of smaller durations; to decisively posit a specific number rather than fret over whether or not the number is exactly right. I still believe this to be true, though I suspect that {HochHom wa’ ben} or {wa'ben HochHom} [I will confess to not feeling consistently sure which is right] is the better choice in this instance. If you believe this is a mistake, I’m certainly open to further discussion. Meanwhile, if this solution is not acceptable, I don’t know what we could replace it with. charghwI’ ‘utlh
On Feb 11, 2019, at 3:21 AM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 at 14:52, Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com <mailto:willmartin2@mac.com>> wrote: Perhaps this fundamental lack of grammatical and vocabulary tools to indicate an approximate time period was an accidental omission for Okrand, but given the line which Okrand either wrote or collaborated on, “A Klingon may be inaccurate, but he is never approximate,” I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that it was intentional, and based on Okrand’s take on the cultural character of the Klingons. If nothing else, it gives him an excuse for not addressing the issue.
I *do* think that it's unreasonable to think that it was intentional, because the alternative is to believe that Okrand is some sort of omniscient being who has anticipated every use to which the language would eventually be put, when he's stated that he never expected Klingon to take off in the way that it did.
For a long time, we also did not know how to do comparisons other than "X is [verb]er than Y". He's subsequently revealed that the comparison formula is rather more flexible than what was described in TKD, allowing for negations ("X is not [verb]er than Y"), equalities, and even ways to imply whether the quality being compared is positive or negative. All of this was done without his having been forced to do so because he had to fit something a Star Trek writer had already written into a show. He simply hadn't thought about it, and then he did.
If someone had been inclined, prior to the revelation of that additional information, to argue that Klingon culture favoured comparisons where one thing definitely has more of a quality than another thing, and that the language simply *couldn't* make any other kind of comparison, they'd have been right about that specific point (based on information known at that time), and they'd have been making the same argument that you're now making, but they would've turned out to be wrong about the conclusion that they drew from it. Similarly, the conclusion you have drawn doesn't follow from the evidence you've presented to support it.
Your entire claim is based on this one sentence that "Though Klingons are sometimes inaccurate, they are never approximate." You keep coming back to it as if it settled the question. It doesn't, though, because first of all it was said specifically in the context of telling the time (i.e., the hour of the day), and secondly there may be situations in which specifying a time as being shortly before (or after) an event is the least approximate thing you could say.
Here's the quote in context: <Klingons have adopted the way most civilized planets in the galaxy tell time. They have twenty-four hour days. "Zero hours" means midnight, "twelve hundred hours" means noon, "nineteen hundred hours" means seven p.m., and so on. Klingons pride themselves on punctuality, so it is important to be precise when referring to time. Though Klingons are sometimes inaccurate, they are never approximate.>
The context here is *punctuality*. Instead of saying "in the evening", you should say "7 pm". On that we agree. One might argue that this extends to longer periods of time, outside the context of stating a time to meet, but that would be an *interpretation*. I don't believe that the quote text implies that a Klingon wouldn't say "almost a century" or "most of a decade", when the context has nothing to do with *punctuality*. I especially don't accept that it applies to a time in the past, where punctuality is just completely out of scope (unless we're talking about time travel).
The SkyBox example which introduced {HochHom} has already been mentioned, but there's a second one, from the Smithsonian exhibit: {tera' jar Soch, DIS wa' Hut jav Hut, maSDaq SaqmeH Qu' wa'DIch HochHom turlu'taHvIS, wej logh lengwI'pu' pa'mey 'oH Apollo wa'maH wa' ra'ghom bobcho' Columbia'e'.} "The Apollo 11 Command Module, 'Columbia,' was the living quarters for the three-person crew during most of the first manned lunar landing mission in July 1969."
Okrand wrote the Klingon translation based on an original English text that he was free to edit. (If you compare the English version of the exhibit and the bilingual one, the English text of the bilingual exhibit had been edited down to leave out unimportant details.) The evidence shows that he was free to leave out the "most" from the English text, but he chose to leave it in both the English and the Klingon.
It seems to be perfectly fine to express "most of a [time period]" in Klingon when the context has nothing to do with punctuality. When you're talking about "most of the 23rd century" or "most of the mission", there's no expectation that someone would be punctual, because the context is not about stating a specific time for a purpose. The only reason we can't easily say "almost a year ago" is because of how Klingon has separate words for "year" and "years ago" and "years from now", and we don't know how to modify {ben}. We can certainly say, for example, {wa' DIS HochHom ret}, using {ret} instead of {ben}.
Also, I don't really take seriously any claims in Star Trek along the lines of "species X always/never does Y". Spock says Vulcans don't lie (which is obviously a lie). We also find statements about Klingons (translated into Klingon) such as the following in Okrand's works: "No Klingon ever breaks his word", "Klingons never bluff", "Klingons do not faint". Granted, these were originally expressed by Star Trek writers and he merely translated them. But he chose those specific sentences to translate when he could've ignored them. (There are many more things said about Klingons than actually said in Klingon.) Does that mean that the Klingon language has no way to express exaggeration or falsehood, or talk about fainting? Of course not. In the same way, even if Klingons *prefer* directness, it doesn't follow that they *can't* express approximation.
There have been several references to Klingons’ preference for direct speech, without vague, floral niceties that humans are so drawn to include.
But what does this have to do with "almost a year ago"? The "almost" isn't there for social politeness. It's there to distinguish that period of time from other periods such as "long before the anniversary", "on the date of the anniversary", and "in the time after the anniversary". In that specific context, those are the most accurate, most direct, and least approximate labels for the information that matters.
-- De'vID _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
participants (4)
-
Daniel Dadap -
De'vID -
SuStel -
Will Martin