[Tlhingan-hol] wovmoHbogh jan

[Karen Alessio]

I agree here too. I'm pretty new, and would never have thought to use those
phrases, and may have made up my own incorrect or less-intelligible ones.
On Nov 6, 2015 9:31 AM, "André Müller" <esperantist at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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