[Tlhingan-hol] do {vIttlhegh} become {ngo'} or {qan}?
De'vID
de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com
Thu Sep 5 21:27:35 PDT 2013
When I saw {vIttlhegh ngo'}, I instinctively thought it should've been
{vIttlhegh qan}:
https://twitter.com/ghunwI/status/375061262540890113
But is my instinct correct? Which would you use?
I think my intuition is coloured by the Chinese correspondents
(Chinese makes the same distinction between not-new-old and
not-young-old as Klingon):
ngo' - v. be old (not new) -- 舊 (not 新)
qan - v. be old (not young) -- 老 (not 青)
In Chinese, a time-worn proverb is described as old with age (老), not
old due to lack or fading of novelty (which is what 舊 would imply).
But the Klingon "old" pair may not work in exactly the same way as the
Chinese. Indeed, we know young Klingons don't describe new language as
{chu'} or {Qup}, but as {ghoQ}. They also refer to old-fashioned
language as {Doy'}, but how do Klingons refer to statements which are
old, but still venerated?
--
De'vID
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