[Tlhingan-hol] Things missing

[Rohan Fenwick]

ghItlhpu' qunnoQ, jatlh:
> It is not that i'm asking for 
more canon. It is that i want/i demand/
> accept nothing less than Klingon 
to be perfect.

With respect, you'll be waiting a very, very long time then. There is no such thing as a "perfect" language, constructed or otherwise.

taH:
> Yes,now i'm a beginner. But the time will come,when i 
will be able to
> write in Klingon ; when this language will have been 
made a part of
> myself,the same way that my heart is a part of my body. 
It will be part
> of my education/skills/abilities and i expect nothing 
less than for it to
> be complete.

Klingon is already as "complete" as a language really gets. It just hasn't got as big a lexicon as many other languages, but even with the lexicon we already have, just because we don't have a Klingon word for "marshmallow" doesn't mean I can't describe a marshmallow in excruciating detail to you using nothing but Klingon. That's why I feel a little uncertain about your analogy with the posterior cruciate ligament (or as one might say it in Klingon, {qIv HomDu' nI' rarmeH  'em to'waQ}). Every language leaves out a few small organs (words, grammatical features...) that it can do most of the time without, but has to hobble by every once in a while. How obscure does a word have to be to qualify as a real gap worthy of addressing, rather than one that we can just leave and work around? Even in English there are plenty of lexical and grammatical gaps that mean we sometimes have to rethink how we're expressing things.

But these differences are fundamentally part of the language learning experience, no matter which language you learn. Discovering that a language you're learning has no way of distinguishing blue from green, or has three distinct words for love, means that you're conceptualising in a slightly different way when you're working within that language's boundaries. I don't know about you, but for my part that's one of the things I love about learning languages: it's about seeing that people use different conceptual lenses to break up, analyse, understand, and communicate about the world. It's unfair in some ways to treat Klingon as though it should be above those facts.

taH:
> Why shouldn't i think that all these "acrobatics" wouldn't eventually
> lead to a sentence which's meaning could be interpreted differently
> depending on the interpretation of the individual listener ?

To that I'd respond two things. One is, why *should* (as opposed to shouldn't) you think that would be the case, any more so than with any other language? And the other is, all languages are subject to ambiguity and crossed wires and failures to communicate. I misunderstand people all the freaking time even when I'm just speaking with them in my native English.

Spend some time seeing what you can do with, in, and for this language, and then make your decision as to whether it's for you or not. I'm not as experienced as Qov or ghunchu'wI' or SuStel or lojmIt tI'wI' nuv or many of the other Grammarians, but with 15 years of Klingon under my own belt I can promise you pretty confidently that the kinds of gaps you fear are truly few and far between. I've only come across maybe a half-dozen concepts that I've been utterly stumped to express in all that time - not bad for a language such as this. In the meantime, you'll have a lot of fun with this language, and you'll never meet a more fun, intelligent, curious, fascinating, and accepting bunch of people.

QeS 'utlh
 		 	   		  
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