[Tlhingan-hol] rup

[Karen Alessio]

I think he meant nouns in different classes as being seperate grammatical
genders
On Nov 12, 2015 1:53 PM, "qunnoQ HoD" <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:

> > 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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