[Tlhingan-hol] rup

[qunnoQ HoD]

> and we have gendered nouns (with gender boundaries being intentionally
alien to human languages)

what is a "gendered noun" ?

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 8:44 PM, Will Martin <lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The backstory on this is less romantic, but more interesting than you
> might have expected.
>
> One of the challenges Marc Okrand has had is that sometimes circumstances
> press HIM to make changes in the language. He’s long tried to make sure
> that anyone who learns the language should be able to go to a movie where
> someone speaks the language and understand what that person is saying.
>
> But movie making sometimes involves decisions that involve using scenes
> differently than they were expected to be used in the movie. In one case,
> in one of the very first scripts, the actor had a line which Okrand
> translated properly according to the vocabulary and grammar that he had
> developed at that time. The scene was shot, and then later, the director
> changed the subtitle, making the line mean something completely different.
>
> The line had a now-disappeared verb {ma’}, with it’s prefix {qa-} and what
> was at the time a past tense suffix {-pu’}. The word was {qama’pu’}. But
> the new meaning forced that word to mean “prisoners”. He has subsequently
> made the verb {ma’} mean “accommodate”, which is apparently what he had to
> do to satisfy his director. And the word {qama’} became “prisoner”. But he
> had already used the plural suffix {-mey} in other lines, so he had to come
> up for some reason to have two different plural suffixes…
>
> Since then, Klingon lost tense, gained {-pu’} as the perfective, and we
> have gendered nouns (with gender boundaries being intentionally alien to
> human languages, but consistent within the movies and television shows that
> use the language.
>
> There’s a similar story behind the verb {qar’a’} used to create a
> question. The scene was shot in English and he had to add words to keep the
> actor’s lips moving when it was dubbed into Klingon…
>
> In the early days, this kind of thing happened a lot.
>
> pItlh
> lojmIt tI'wI'nuv
>
>
>
> On Nov 12, 2015, at 1:25 PM, Fatairae <fatairae at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> All of which is a fascinating insight into the culture that spawned the
> culture.  Is the gender a relic of ancient usage? Or an explicit statement
> of subjective opinion by the speaker?
>  To use a couple Terran languages as references (since what are our
> brains, but giant categorizing machines):
>  In English (through old English), we have relics of the gender system,
> though only recognizable as such in plurals (wolf/wolves vs mouse/mice).
> We don't think of these as "categories" of words.  A similar example (in
> many of the Indo-European languages) is the disjoint between the feminine
> gender, and what is actually female. If I remember correctly, the old
> English "wif" (wife) is masculine.  Tamilian has a completely different
> system (similar to Klingon actually), where by all sentient things get one
> gender, and everything else goes in the other.
>
>  So, the question becomes one of philosophy or grammar?  Is it a hardcoded
> system, wherein it sounds as wrong as "mouses", or is it an active
> "philosophical" choice on the part of the speaker to make a statement about
> the subject?  To say "I acknowledge speaking", on the part of the target;
> and thus its import is specific to the subjective opinion of the speaker?
>
> None of which is solved by "canon", but fun to hash out the concepts from
> what we have anyway hehe.
>
>
> On Nov 12, 2015, at 10:50, Will Martin <lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> When Okrand tells us that Klingon gender is determined by the ability to
> use language, I don’t think this is code words for “has a soul”. I take him
> at his word. As a class of nouns, is this an example of a being capable of
> using language? If someone speaks of {targhpu’wIj}, I probably would not be
> able to stop myself from responding, {toH, pIj boja'chuq’a' targhmeylIj SoH
> je? boja’chuqtaHvIS nuq bop jatlhtaHghachraj?}
>
>
>
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