I wonder.. vagh tup neH ret vIghro' vIlegh Is this correct, and if yes what would it mean ? only five minutes ago, I saw the cat ? or just five minutes ago, I saw the cat ? or both ? or is it just senseless ? ~ cbcbcbb
On Aug 20, 2019, at 07:25, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
only five minutes ago, I saw the cat ? or just five minutes ago, I saw the cat ? or both ?
What’s the difference between those two, in English? My instinct would be to render the phrase as {vagh tup neH ret}, as you have, but I could also see it being {vagh tup ret neH}, since {ret} is a noun and it’s possible that the {neH} should bind to the time expression as a whole, but I do think it makes more sense for it to bind to the duration itself.
Hugh:
What’s the difference between those two, in English?
I don't know. Good question.. But my problem is, that reading the klingon {vagh tup neH ret vIghro' vIlegh}, a part of my mind understands it as "I saw the cat only five minutes ago" i.e. "I saw it only once and that was five minutes ago". ~ chchchh
On Aug 20, 2019, at 07:41, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
But my problem is, that reading the klingon {vagh tup neH ret vIghro' vIlegh}, a part of my mind understands it as "I saw the cat only five minutes ago" i.e. "I saw it only once and that was five minutes ago".
Ah, I wouldn’t have gotten that sense from either the Klingon or the English without further explanation. In English, it would have to be something like “The only time I saw the cat was five minutes ago” or in Klingon something like {wa'logh neH vIghro' vIleghpu'; vagh tup neH vIleghpu'} for me to understand that meaning right away.
On Tue, 20 Aug 2019 at 14:36, Daniel Dadap <daniel@dadap.net> wrote:
On Aug 20, 2019, at 07:25, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
only five minutes ago, I saw the cat ? or just five minutes ago, I saw the cat ? or both ?
What’s the difference between those two, in English?
My instinct would be to render the phrase as {vagh tup neH ret}, as you have, but I could also see it being {vagh tup ret neH}, since {ret} is a noun and it’s possible that the {neH} should bind to the time expression as a whole, but I do think it makes more sense for it to bind to the duration itself.
I think it should be {vagh tup ret neH}, though that's just my intuition. My justification is that {tup ret} "binds together" quite strongly, and acts as if it were a single word, like {Hu'}. -- De'vID
wa' DoS wIqIp jIH, De'vID je. Le mar. 20 août 2019, à 09 h 23, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> a écrit :
On Tue, 20 Aug 2019 at 14:36, Daniel Dadap <daniel@dadap.net> wrote:
On Aug 20, 2019, at 07:25, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
only five minutes ago, I saw the cat ? or just five minutes ago, I saw the cat ? or both ?
What’s the difference between those two, in English?
My instinct would be to render the phrase as {vagh tup neH ret}, as you have, but I could also see it being {vagh tup ret neH}, since {ret} is a noun and it’s possible that the {neH} should bind to the time expression as a whole, but I do think it makes more sense for it to bind to the duration itself.
I think it should be {vagh tup ret neH}, though that's just my intuition. My justification is that {tup ret} "binds together" quite strongly, and acts as if it were a single word, like {Hu'}.
-- De'vID _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
I’d just like to point out that {vagh tup ret vIghro’ vIlegh} conveys pretty much the same meaning, without the angst. I only comment given the advice that “A Klingon may be inaccurate, but he is never approximate.” I’m reading into that the sense that Klingons typically stick to the facts with less of a tendency to want to elaborate unnecessarily. Why do we care if it’s “only” five minutes ago? So long as we know it’s five minutes ago, we know what we need to know. As humans, we tend to want to both give the facts and comment on them in a frilly kind of way that annoys many Klingons. So, there is nothing wrong with adding {neH} as you have. I’m merely suggesting that perhaps one might culturally consider it annoyingly superfluous. It’s not grammatically incorrect. It just might stray slightly from best practices, if Klingon were to have an equivalent of Strunk & White’s style guide for English. The suffixes give us clues as to what kind of commentary on a statement that Klingons trend toward providing. English favors “helper words”, instead, so adding something like {neH} feels natural for us, and Klingons certainly do it, though they probably don’t do it as often as we do, saving it for settings where it marks an exception to what one might expect without the use of the extra word. If it felt like a “short five minutes”, then I’d expect a Klingon to say it was four minutes ago. Or three. Accuracy is less important than having the information itself convey your meaning, instead of giving your emotional commentary on what kind of five minutes ago you saw the cat. It was an “only” five minutes, instead of a “not-only” five minutes. Really? Making the comment might mark you as being overly sensitive to the quality of your experience of the passage of time. Like you are letting us know that you were sufficiently entertained during this particular five minutes so that it wasn’t as boring as a normal five minutes would be? Like we care about this, because…? Just an opinion. Not cannon. Not based on any kind of authority. Just a comment. charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.
On Aug 20, 2019, at 8:25 AM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
I wonder..
vagh tup neH ret vIghro' vIlegh
Is this correct, and if yes what would it mean ?
only five minutes ago, I saw the cat ? or just five minutes ago, I saw the cat ? or both ?
or is it just senseless ?
~ cbcbcbb _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
charghwI':
I’d just like to point out that {vagh tup ret vIghro’ vIlegh} conveys pretty much the same meaning, without the angst.
True. I've thought of this fact, and I agree. The need to say something like, "only five minutes ago I saw the cat", would perhaps exist in a setting where someone would need to explain himself: person A: The cat is hungry, why didn't you feed it ?!?! person B: It's not my fault, I saw it only five minutes ago ! This is the reason, I wondered about this subject. But now, that I think about it, how would you (or anyone else) comment on the following ? vagh tup ret'e' vIghro' vIlegh Is the above correct/acceptable ? Or would this be "overmarked" ? ~ qnqnqq
On 8/20/2019 8:25 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
vagh tup neH ret vIghro' vIlegh
Is this correct, and if yes what would it mean ?
only five minutes ago, I saw the cat ? or just five minutes ago, I saw the cat ? or both ?
I would point out that /I saw the cat/ is a perfective concept. *<timestamp> vIghro' vIleghpu'.* You would only say just *<timestamp> vIghro' vIlegh* if you were saying something like /five minutes ago I was looking at the cat when suddenly.../ -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
participants (7)
-
Daniel Dadap -
De'vID -
Hugh Son puqloD -
Jackson Bradley -
mayqel qunen'oS -
SuStel -
Will Martin