[Tlhingan-hol] wovmoHbogh jan

[André Müller]

I, in turn, tend to disagree with QeS 'utlh on this one.

It depends what purpose the dictionary serves. A short Klingon-English
dictionary with just the Klingon lexemes and non-predictable forms would
not include it, and it wouldn't include {tlhIngan Hol} 'Klingon language'
or {Doq 'ej Qaj wuS rur} 'to be brown' either, because their meaning is
just the combination of the meanings of their compounds. Probably not even
{HolQeD} 'linguistics' would need to be included, it being the logical
combination of {Hol} 'language' and {QeD} 'science', cf. German
"Sprachwissenschaft" 'language-science'. For such dictionaries I'd agree,
it might not be useful to include those terms. But who'd use such
dictionaries?

The dictionaries a Klingon learner/speaker is likely to use is a dictionary
in both directions, and for us, especially English-Klingon seems the most
useful. As far as Klingon goes, words like {Ha'DIbaH ghIH tIr ngogh je}
'hamburger', although just being a descriptive phrase, is just as much a
collocation as is {Doq 'ej Qaj wuS rur} 'to be brown' or {tlhIngan Hol}
'Klingon language', and what people like me - who're not yet fluent in the
language - do, when writing something in Klingon and lacking word, is to
look it up in the dictionary. We hope to not only find 1:1 expressions
(e.g. non-compounds) but also descriptive phrases that are common or have
been used before. If I want to mention a hamburger, I'd prefer to use an
already established term for it rather than making up my own. The same is
true for 'lamp'. I see these words as lexicalized.
Good, large dictionaries contain these things as well, although often in
sub-entries. This depends on the dictionary, of course.

For my own dictionary I try to include all kinds of words and translations,
marking non-canonical translations with an asterisk. When I enter a new
word I carefully think about what I might look for in the English-Klingon
part. I would not enter something like {paq QaQ} 'good book' anywhere if
Marc Okrand uses that word anywhere, because it's not really a fixed term.
But I'd add {ngogh mutlhwI'} 'bricklayer', because I might someday want to
look for this word in the English-Klingon part and rather have an already
set phrase instead of coming up with something on my own. What I do (and
many do not), is that I added the word 'mason*' to it, with an asterisk. I
prefer it that way.
My dictionary currently contains 3607 Klingon entries, including such
lexicalized compounds or phrases, and 6004 words in the English part. That
makes it perfect for the purpose I use it for.

The new word list has a slightly different purpose. I'd say it's useful to
also add {wovmoHbogh jan} 'light' to it, simply because in English we
happen to use one word for it. In my dictionary, the translation is 'light;
lamp*' and it has a note that it refers to an illuminating device (so I
won't use it to mean sunlight by accident).

A really good printed dictionary would list {wovmoHbogh jan} as a
translation for 'light' and perhaps 'lamp' in its English-Klingon part, but
might not list it as a lemma in the Klingon-English part. The entry would
be found as a sub-entry or perhaps example phrase under {wov} (or {wovmoH}
maybe) and {jan}.

- André
(mu'ghommey boSwI')


2015-11-06 14:35 GMT+01:00 Rohan Fenwick <qeslagh at hotmail.com>:

> ghItlhpu' ghunchu'wI', jatlh:
> > {wovmoHbogh jan} isn't a word. It's a phrase that means exactly what
> > the parts mean. There's no reason to give it a special vocabulary
> > entry of its own.
>
> jang Quvar, jatlh:
> > I used to think similarly, but after TalkNow I realized that some word
> > combinations indeed deserve their own entry:
> > There's no reason? {wovmoHbogh jan} is translated as "light" (i.e. a
> > device). Now if someone may search for a term "light", he should find
> that
> > word.
>
> I agree with ghunchu'wI' on that one. Having a single-word translation in
> English does not justify calling a phrase a word *in Klingon*, and we need
> to be really careful about what phrases should be considered useful units
> for the purposes of dictionary making. I think {wovmoHbogh jan} for "light"
> deserves its own lexical entry every bit as much as {Ha'DIbaH ghIH tIr
> ngogh je} does for "hamburger". Which is to say, not at all. There have to
> be borderlines and once you start letting in such semantically transparent
> phrases, how far does one go? Surely {Daghtuj gho, tIr chab bIDmey je} is a
> reasonable translation of "hamburger" too. Does that deserve a lexical
> entry too?
>
> taH:
> > Even if you decide {wovmoHbogh jan} should be omitted in the new words
> list,
> > IMO it belongs in every well managed dictionary.
>
> I respectfully disagree on that too. If you're building a canon database,
> absolutely, but a canon database isn't a dictionary. And if you're looking
> to maintain a thoroughly comprehensive dictionary along similar lines to
> the OED, sure, it's a good idea to use it as an example phrase or a
> compound, listed in a subsection under the verb {wov} or the noun {jan}.
> And it's a good Klingon translation of the English noun "light, lamp". But
> {wovmoHbogh jan} doesn't warrant its own lexical entry in a Klingon-English
> dictionary.
>
> QeS 'utlh
>
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