[Tlhingan-hol] Negative Numbers

[lojmIt tI'wI' nuv]

Well, we don't have canon to pronounce anything as the correct word. In most languages, when you need to describe something for which there is no word, different people choose different words or phrases to express it, and as long as others understand, that's okay. There doesn't  have to be one right way to say it until canon arises. 

I'd probably prefer {nge'lu'pu'bogh} over {nge'bogh} since the latter begs the question of who is the implied subject. Even more precisely, {paghvo' nge'lu'pu'bogh} mimics the commonly redundant English phrasing. One might wonder if {taH} has a more generic meaning and Maltz simply has only been asked about it in the context of measuring angles. 

{yoy} obviously worked at least once. It assumes a vertical axis on some sort of one or two dimensional graphing. So long as both people share that analog for the measurement, it works. If you speak of a measurement with a horizontal gauge, it might be just as accurate to say {pagh poSDaq}, unless Klingon gauges read right to left. 

Of course, canon can do whatever it damned well pleases. We might have new number words that express negative versions of powers of ten (or three, if they are used rarely enough to have not gone through the evolution of positive numbers), or there could be alternative scales for each area of measurement with a lower zero, like our several scales for temperature, progressing to Kelvin, which we don't use unless we have to. 

Sent from my iPad

> On Mar 8, 2014, at 7:48 AM, ghunchu'wI' <qunchuy at alcaco.net> wrote:
> 
>> On Mar 8, 2014, at 6:39 AM, Fiat Knox <fiat_knox at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> 
>> Currently thinking about negative numbers, and wondering about how to express them in Klingon, while we're waiting for Maltz to come back and tell us. nge'bogh springs to mind. Any ideas?
> 
> rugh? ;-)
> 
> A few weeks ago Qov and I were chatting about the weather and I wanted to describe the subzero temperatures. I found myself saying {cha'maH yoy Celcius}.
> 
> -- ghunchu'wI' 
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