[Tlhingan-hol] beings capable of speech

[De'vID jonpIn]

Josh's project to translate the Dhammapada got me to re-read the Jataka
Tales (stories about the Buddha's past lives, many as some kind of animal,
and which serve as moral fables in the manner of Aesop).

I don't know whether the apparent Human penchant for writing stories where
the protagonists are animals extends to Klingons, but if they also tell
stories involving talking animals, or if they were to translate such
stories into Klingon, would the animals take the "beings capable of speech"
suffixes?  Normally, rabbits, elephants, crocodiles, turtles, cranes,
deers, and so on are not capable of speech.  In these stories, it is
assumed that animals do, in fact, talk; that is, the conceit is that all
animals are actually capable of animal-speech, which we humans are not
ordinarily able to understand.  Presumably, since the animals understand
one another, they would, e.g., call each other {jupwI'} (rather than
{jupwIj}), and so on.

Does anyone have any insight into this?  I'm sure some of Aesop's fables or
the Jatakas have been translated into Klingon.  My intuition is that a
Klingon telling such a story would have the speaking animals talk as if
they were Klingons, i.e., use the "beings capable of speech" suffixes for
themselves and other animals.

But now, what about a world in which everything talks?  They're playing
Enchanted (the Amy Adams/Patrick Dempsey movie) on TV, and in the cartoon
universe inhabited by Princess Gisele, everything talks -- the animals, the
cutlery, the furniture, etc.  (So, the typical Disney cartoon world.)
Would everything that talks take the "beings capable of speech" suffxies?
What about their (body) parts?  Would a talking {raS} refer to its
{'uSDu'}?  I guess we already know how a talking {nevDagh} would refer to
its elbows/handles.

--
De'vID
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stodi.digitalkingdom.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol/attachments/20111226/9101d31c/attachment.html>