[Tlhingan-hol] Lament (Re: A demonstration of aspect we can all follow)

[lojmIt tI'wI'nuv]

While I don't have nostalgia for a past in which we had a consensus simply because I've been in the middle of too many arguements throughout the history of the language and I don't believe we've ever had a really solid consensus, I'm not amused by this. We've lost a lot of members here. I don't think losing another one is amusing.

If you can still hear me, I'd like you,ter'eS, to reconsider. Likely, this is yet another storm that will blow over, and there will be a more positive, cooperative communication shared here once again.

Yes, there is a problem when someone enjoys jumping in and basically saying, "You guys are idiots and you have it all wrong. I really am the only one who understands how this language works. Let me set you all straight."

But we've always had that. Every rare now and then, somebody shakes things up. I did, myself, when I pushed the idea that {-ghach} was being massively overused lots of years ago. Our Australian member responded by rewriting his impressive collection of Shakespeare sonnets (written in Klingon metered verse) to cut back on what had been excessive use of the suffix. I was a bit stunned by that. So, that was a bit of a jag.

I did it again when people were arguing about how to express the question word "which" in Klingon. I didn't burst in with intent to create a jag. I mostly fought to stop a jag in a bad direction, misusing {nuq} as an adjective, and it turned into changing an English question into a command. Instead of "Which weapon do you want?" you say, {nuH yIwIv!}. 

SuStel has had created jags as well, and this one may be the newest in his collection. He deserves congratulations if he pulls it off.

But most of the time, our understanding of the language is expanded communally through experience over time, rather than in sharp jags, driven by a single person's insistence on a specific interpretation of a point of grammar. Time alone determines how things go, and "it ain't over 'till the fat lady sings."

On this one, I don't hear singing yet. I'm listening, and she may belt one out any minute now. But not yet.

I'm actually happy to go along on this one after I've done some research I haven't had the chance to do yet. It seems a bit too radical a change from what has been a long-existing understanding of the language on the two points mentioned:

1. Okrand's perfective seems more focused on the end point instead of the entire duration of the action of the verb.

2. Okrand does not seem to indicate exactly what the absence of a Type 7 suffix means with the same level of certainty and precision that SuStel claims.

If after looking over a bunch of stuff, I see evidence that SuStel is right on this, I'll definitely concede, and we can progress as a happy family. Qov seems convinced, which surprises me a bit, but I accept that. I haven't heard much from anyone else.

Likely others are as fed up with this noise as you are.

We are unnecessarily nasty to one another. I wish we could evolve past that, and celebrate that we are doing something together, instead of making it a pissing contest so often.

I'm not delighted with my own participation in it, but it's really hard not to respond in kind to wording that is quite confrontational and severe.

Why can't we get along better?

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



On Jun 7, 2012, at 4:31 PM, David Trimboli wrote:

> On 6/7/2012 4:08 PM, Terrence Donnelly wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --- On Thu, 6/7/12, David Trimboli and many others wrote:
>>> lots of stuff
>> 
>> You know what this list is now? A starving man in a locked room.
>> He's long past the stage of having any food to eat or even any body
>> fat to burn, and now he's burning his own muscle. We have relatively
>> little new Klingon to study (that we can totally trust), and as a
>> result, we keep going back to the texts we do have and picking them
>> apart. As I commented a while back during the debate about what
>> {-Daq} really means (or maybe it was {ghaj}), if we work hard enough,
>> we can make this language totally unusable. If anybody wonders why
>> more newbies don't post here, I'd say that this constant tendency to
>> rethink long-established patterns, this "everything you know is
>> wrong" mindset, goes a long way towards explaining it.
>> 
>> I'm pretty much done with Klingon, and the way a once-firm concensus
>> about how it operates has been eroded in the last few years is a
>> large part of the reason why.
> 
> This amuses me, and sounds very much like religion. The traditional definition of Klingon?
> 
> Consensus? On this list? Are you kidding?!
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
> http://www.trimboli.name/
> 
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