[Tlhingan-hol] nuq bop bom: 'ay' javmaH Soch: <voqHa'chuqghach>

Qov robyn at flyingstart.ca
Fri Oct 28 10:19:34 PDT 2011


Here are some end-of-story notes and follow up on the last chapter.

1. As well as writing what is turning into an epic tlhIngan Hol saga, 
I've given myself the additional storytelling challenge of committing 
to chapters by sending them out, before the whole story is finished. 
I slipped up yesterday, for example, with the lieutenant's ETA. I 
can't quite make that make sense with the story as it has progressed 
since, so I'm going to retroactively delete <ghaytan wejHu' mapaw> 
from his transmission.  Didn't happen. That's not what he said. It 
was a glitch in your subspace receivers.

2. ghunchu'wI' started discussion on the thing that I found.
On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 10:58 AM, Qov <robyn at flyingstart.ca> wrote:
> > jatlh "qavoqbe' bIjatlh."[38]
> > ...
> > [38] Ok this is a way more interesting question than the one 
> about whether I
> > should use the word jatlh or ja' every time I use quotation 
> marks. I want to
> > see how you react to this, then I will tell you what I am 
> thinking about it.
>
>Hey, that's neat. I didn't think anything of it when I read it,
>besides quietly noting that it was properly formed as reported speech
>according to TKD. Now that you point it out as something worth
>focusing on, I realize that what she actually had said was {vIvoqbe'}.
>
>It works. I'm willing to consider it the moral equivalent of
>tense-mangling in English reported speech: "You said you were bringing
>donuts next week." If you think too hard, it seems broken, but it's
>the right way to do it.

As ghunchu'wI' pointed out, what 'eSSIm said was vIvoqbe' - I don't 
trust him . What Mahoun would say in English would be "You said you 
don't trust me." Outside the context of this story, if I asked you 
how to say "You said you trust me," in Klingon, everyone would say 
<bIjatlh qavoq> (or <qavoq bIjatlh>). So does the fact that the 
context made her actual word be vIvoq mean that bIjatlh qavoq is not 
correct here? I think bIjatlh qavoq means "you said you trust me" 
regardless of whether the actual words spoken were, "QIpbogh novvetlh 
SuD vIvoq," "DaHjaj qavoqchoH," "I trust you" or even "Hovmey Davan." 
For example in an earlier draft the next line was "SaH Duj 
bIjatlhDI'." I don't think Mahoun ever said the wards "SaH Duj" but 
he said other words that avered the existence of a ship, and no one 
would protest that <SaH Duj bIjatlhDI'> is not the way to say when 
you said there was a ship would they? I think a Klingon can say "You 
said there was a ship," without saying <bIjatlh INSERT_EXACT_QUOTATION_HERE.>

This is the difference between quoted speech and reported speech that 
I was getting at in the earlier discussion about whether my use of 
quotation marks instead of attributed speech tags was acceptable. 
(For the record, and I'm sure the proponents of always using them 
have noticed,  I've started using them almost always. I still feel 
that there's a difference when a character is saying "Person X said 
this" as opposed to when *I* am saying it. But the more I thought 
about it the more I wanted to use ja' and jatlh each time.)

And I think it's cool that although this is quite an important aspect 
of reported speech, that it took so long for me to get here, in my 
Klingon-speaking career.

3. I'm not using a proper way of tracking footnotes, just manually 
popping them at the end of the story and sometimes they or their 
indices get lost as I edit. Here are some leftovers:

[26] If you're wondering why the vutwI' reports to the HungpIn it's 
because traditionally the HungpIn and the captain were the only ones 
with access to on board valuables, and in a slow prewarp ship food 
and water were the only things of real value, so the HungpIn unlocked 
the food for the vutwI' and supervised to see that it was not stolen. 
Okay that and the fact that I got to this chapter before I realized, 
"you know, there are about twenty-five people on this ship, working 
all hours of the day and night, and they have to cope with alien food 
supplies. They really ought to have someone in charge of that. And as 
I made my org chart in MS Paint it's really hard to move around, thus 
the vutwI' went where she fit.

[28] I orignally wrote two whole 'ay'mey on the captain looking for 
his jacket. I got a hold of myself, though and deleted it all, 
realizing that the information therein transmitted in a flashback 
would be much more interesting done directly, because it doens't 
matter when it happens exactly.  So it will come up in a later 'ay''a'.

[30] Despite the numerous technical and plot errors in this story, I 
wanted to assure you I am doing some research. I checked to see if 
Andorians can eat chocolate (no), verified the number of lungs 
bIraqlul has given to Klingons (3), used the Lorentz contraction 
formula, checked out microscope photos of saliva, and scanned papers 
like 
http://www.catalyticdrying.com/pdfs/2011/effects-of-flameless-catalytic-infrared-radiation-on-stored-wheat-insects-and-wheat-quality.pdf 
to try and figure out what sort of things 'eSSIm cared about.

P.S. When are the thirty days up? I have a deleted scene I want to 
send, but it is dependent on a number of new words. 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stodi.digitalkingdom.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol/attachments/20111028/c362287a/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the Tlhingan-hol mailing list