[Tlhingan-hol] mIl'oD veDDIr SuvwI': 'ay' 1 - DujlIj yIvoq

[Rohan Fenwick - QeS 'utlh]

jatlhpu' Qov:
> Also I would have to add hard spaces everywhere, and that's too
> much like work.

vIjangpu', jIjatlh:
> Ah. I hadn't thought of that... definitely a useful point. You may
> convince me yet.

jatlh je Qov:
> I pulled all my non-English novels off the shelf and looked through
> at the different techniques. It's funny how much you don't see, once
> you accept that that's speech. I still haven't figured out the
> typographical rules for Russian, which sometimes uses the seagulls (I
> can't find an English name for them, but "seagulls" is perfect
> because a) they look like sideways seagulls and b) guillemot is a
> sort of seabird.

Apparently they're just called guillemets in English too. But I like
"seagulls". :) And apparently it's only the crazy French who do theirs
with a space; the Wikipedia page on "Non-English usage of quotation
marks" gives Russian, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Armenian and Basque
(among others) as using guillemets without an intervening space.

jIH:
> [2] Relocating to Qo'noS as the Klingon Hamlet did. As a result
> there's a lot of Christian references to tone down, so there'll
> be a lot of vague QI'tu's and qeylISes.

Qov:
> Daj. We're talking Georgia as in Gruzinskaya,
> no? I would have thought it was Muslim. ghorgh qaS?

jIH:
> Yep, that's the one (Sakartvelo). It adopted Christianity as the
> state religion in 319 AD and it's remained so since then.

Qov:
> I did not know that. Literacy often travels with religion,

jIH:
> Absolutely. Most of the earliest Georgian inscriptions are from
> old monasteries and churches, or religious texts and I think it
> might be why the Georgian alphabet was devised in the first place.

Qov:
(poD vay')
> I guess if you have a creative and inspired missionary, you get a
> new script.

Indeed. That's probably what happened with Armenian too (in fact,
calligraphic Georgian in the asomtavruli alphabet looks very much
like Armenian).

Qov:
> whoa, I just looked up the Georgian alphabet on Wikipedia to
> see if there was a name for the script family, I'd assumed it
> was related to Arabic, but that is one messy mess. They have
> three separate alphabets.

jIH:
> HIja'! 'ach nIpon Hol Deghmey rurbe'chu'. notlh cha'; wa' neH
> lulo' DaHjaj Georgianganpu' 'ej Holchaj QIch wabmey 'oSchu' (it's
> fully phonemic).

Qov:
> Wikipedia De' lut vIlaDta'. Dun! Hol vIparHa'bej. loDnalwI'vaD
> jIjatlh, "'Italya' wIghoSpu'DI' Georgia wIghoS 'e' Dachaw''a'?"
> jatlh, "Sure."

maj! 'IH Georgia. Dun. wejben vISuchta'. Daj qunDaj, quv nganpu',
mebpu' quvmoH 'ej vuvchu'. 'ey je SojDaj, 'ej ghIrep vIychorgh
HIqDaj nIv law' Hoch nIv puS. (Georgia vIparHa' chaq 'e' DaloylaH,
qar'a'?)

> wa' Doch lIjpu' ghaH. vIneHDI' vIruch, 'ej ghIb vay' 'e' vIlIjbe'.

jIHaghqu'! ghIbpu' 'e' lIj ghaH 'e' yIchaw'Qo'.

Qov:
> You're reading this in an English translation, or you know
> Georgian?

jIH:
> Nope, it's coming from a translation, though it's a highly regarded
> one that follows the original verse-by-verse and has a bundle of
> annotations on the nuances of the original Georgian.

Qov:
> I wasn't implying, by the way, that the project required working
> from the original, I was just preparing to be stunned and impressed
> if fluency in Georgian was among your talents.

Heh, laHvetlh vIHutlhchu'. By all accounts, Georgian is a ferociously
difficult language. I'd love to learn it, but it's daunting and I'm
not sure I want that big a challenge at the moment.

> As it is, lut vItIvlI'. latlh! latlh!

luq, jIruch!

QeS