[Tlhingan-hol] Easter

[Rhona Fenwick]

ghItlhpu' Voragh, jatlh:
> but I think {-choHlI’} is redundant.   The quality {lIb} either is or isn’t
> applicable in the present.

I honestly did think hard about this - I wondered too if simply {lIb} would be enough, and certainly {lIb QISmaS} is plenty for "Christmas is near". But when one says "Christmas is drawing near" in English, that doesn't mean it's actually near yet, it's *becoming* so. That's literally the textbook definition of {-choH}: a change of state. As for {-lI'}, I used it primarily because SuStel has been very clear in the past arguing for the uses and abuses of the unmarked aspect, which (in the absence of further context)  usually implies a non-punctual but non-continuous action. Using {lIbchoH} on its own is almost like "Christmas draws near" - which can be understood as referring to this Christmas by context in English, but I don't necessarily want to assume that a Klingon would understand it so as well. Conversely, if one is talking about the imminence of this specific Christmas, I thought that {-lI'} was the appropriate aspect marking to choose, since the drawing near of Christmas *is* a continuous action and is progressing towards an endpoint.

I understand your pet peeve and I know I'm guilty of it often, which I'm happy to cop to. But in this instance, where you feel that some people try too hard to mirror the temporal subtleties of English, for my part I feel the opposite: that people (myself included) sometimes don't use the nuances and subtleties of the Klingon aspects to their full effect. English is a language with rich variety in expression of tense and aspect. Klingon is perhaps even more so. {-choHlI'} is a mere combination of grammatical suffixes, not full-blown lexemes; I guess it just doesn't strike me as that much more complicated.

taH:
> What’s the difference between “Christmas is imminent” vs. “Christmas
> is drawing near”?

Exactly the difference between {lIb} and {lIbchoHlI'}. One is a state (right at this moment, is already imminent). The other is a continuous change of state (right at this moment, is not yet imminent but is in the process of becoming so). Unless I'm understanding "Christmas is drawing near" in more literal a fashion than you are?

jatlh SuStel:
> lIbchoHlI' isn't just redundant: it doesn't mean just imminent. It is
> something more like progressing toward starting to be imminent or
> starting to progress toward being imminent. Or something.

With respect, the translations here are misrepresenting the Klingon as more cumbersome than I think it is. {-choH} doesn't mean "start to" necessarily; it just carries a nuance of a change of state, which may or may not be smoothly translated by "start to". To take another example with an adjectival verb, {DoqchoH} is rendered as "redden" in HQ v12n4p9. {DoqchoHlI'}, then, presumably can be safely rendered "it is reddening". Translating it as "progressing toward starting to be red" is technically accurate, but unfairly awkward.

For yet another example, would you have the same problem with {SumchoHlI' vay'}, which expresses a similar concept but in space rather than time? If so, why (purely lexical arguments aside)?

QeS 'utlh
 		 	   		  
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