[Tlhingan-hol] Verbing objects

[Bellerophon, modeler]

On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 7:19 AM, lojmIt tI'wI' nuv <
lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com> wrote:

> While I agree with all of this, the English sentence that was originally
> being translated, "We agree to disagree," uses an infinitive, which Klingon
> doesn't have, so why slavishly hang on to the nearest wording we can think
> of, which is apparently, "We agree that we disagree."? This is awkward, but
> acceptable in English. "... that we disagree," isn't a direct object in
> English.
>
> We don't agree it. We agree "on" it.
>
> Wouldn't it be simpler to rephrase it to:
>
> maQoch 'e' wIghov.
>
> We recognize that we disagree. We accept that we disagree. If you ask "Do
> you disagree?" We both answer, "Yes."  There are many ways to say this
> clearly in Klingon. Why push to say something that makes most of us wince
> because it most closely mirrors the literal wording of a specific English
> statement?
>
> It just comes across as lazy. You don't want a language. You want a
> clever, easy method of encoding English. Meanwhile Klingon rather
> inconveniently happens to be a language.
>

Some background: The discussion of this particular sentence began in
September when André Müller reported that ?{maQoch 'e' wIQochbe'} was
canon, but subsequently the story came out that while MO hadn't overtly
rejected it, he hadn't endorsed it either.

The point of the current discussion wasn't really about rendering the
English cliché. "Let's agree to disagree" seems now to be used mainly as a
code for "You're wrong, but I'm the grown-up here," which is
passive-aggressive posturing, something alien to Klingons. Rather, the
point is that if it isn't clear what usages are acceptable, one might not
summarily reject a novel usage as long as it is unambiguous. Valid objects
of Qoch/Qochbe' could then include a sentence-as-object or the person
(dis)agreed with. One might come up with such usages experimentally, in the
process of trying to express a thought. It seems to me that experimenting
with usage can be instructive. It can certainly reveal ambiguity. But I'm
not advocating misusing words just because of a weak vocabulary, or
mechanically translating sentences into Klingon as if it weren't a language
of its own.

As with other verbs, the usage of "agree" in English is idiomatic: we
happen to say "agree on it" or "about it" (or "to it" for a contract)
rather than "agree for it." Similarly in other languages: why in German
"zustimmen" for "agree" instead of "anstimmen" (or auf-, mit-, etc.)?
Prepositions and separable prefixes help expand the range of objects for a
verb and add new senses to it, even totally new meanings. Klingon is rather
short on syntactic markers like these for objects: two dealing with
location, one for causality, one corresponding to dative case, but none
dealing with instrument, manner, accompaniment, time, etc., and none have
multiple uses, as "with" does: "I eat with my friend," and "I eat with a
fork."

As for maQoch 'e' wIQochbe', I think it expresses the feeble witticism of
the English cliché rather well, as opposed to maQoch 'e' wIghov. It doesn't
seem like a very Klingon thing to say, though.

~'eD

-- 
My modeling blog:          http://bellerophon-modeler.blogspot.com/
My other modeling blog:  http://bellerophon.blog.com
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