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Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: kojabu on November 28, 2005, 04:26:54 PM

Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: kojabu on November 28, 2005, 04:26:54 PM
pooka, no it's not whatever that big word is language. It looks like they're mostly an agglutinating language.

Ex:

Due to your apparent minor errors is

QaghHommeyHeylIjmo'

where

Qagh: error
-Hom: diminutive
-mey: plural
-Hey: Apparent
-lIj: Your
-mo': Due to

I'm still working on the noun section, the verb part will come later.  
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: Teshi on November 28, 2005, 06:24:16 PM
It's like those ancient Sumerian noun phrases in which one word is like.

The-first-king-who-sat-on-the-throne-in-the-kingdom-by-the-mountain-at-the-beginning-of -time-that-spoke-to-god-and-he-replied.


 :lol:  
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: kojabu on November 28, 2005, 06:29:47 PM
Haha yea, gotta love them. Swahili is agglutinating too.

Klingon's just weird because everything is backwards. The syntax structure is Object Verb Subject.  
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: Jonathon on November 28, 2005, 08:04:34 PM
The notable thing about Klingon is that it was designed to seem very foreign to most humans. Hence the word order (which I believe never occurs in natural languages) and other weird features like the morphology and phonology.
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: kojabu on November 28, 2005, 08:09:53 PM
Yea, you gotta love glottal stops all over the place. And that funky tlh sound. Oh Klingon how we love you.  
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: Jonathon on November 28, 2005, 08:27:40 PM
Don't forget the voiceless uvular affricate.
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: kojabu on November 28, 2005, 08:34:14 PM
Err... I'm not doing phonetics, which letter is that?  
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: Jonathon on November 28, 2005, 08:37:58 PM
Q, but it's sometimes transliterated as kr. Of course, that's about as accurate as transliterating the tlh sound as kl.
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: kojabu on November 28, 2005, 08:42:30 PM
Oh yea, the choking sound.  
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: pooka on November 28, 2005, 08:51:59 PM
German is big on agglutinating, and has a modest inventory of gutturals.  
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: kojabu on November 28, 2005, 08:53:39 PM
German's agglutinating?  
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: sarcasticmuppet on November 28, 2005, 10:13:53 PM
I'll agglutinate you!  :pirate:
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: kojabu on November 28, 2005, 10:37:36 PM
Oh please don't. I feel like it would hurt.
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: pooka on November 29, 2005, 02:58:22 PM
German is the most agglutinative language I've studied*.  They have a particular fondness for prefixes.  

*Unless you include English, but I think it is only in sciency jargon like pneumonoultramicro... yada yada.  I guess there is also preantepenultimate, which is actually a linguistics term.


 
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: Brinestone on November 29, 2005, 03:04:17 PM
Kleinkindergeschaeftigungsanstalt!
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: pooka on November 29, 2005, 03:16:08 PM
Right.  I'm not sure how to express the difference between that and Spanish where they say the whole thing as a phrase with a bunch of prepositions in between.  I mean, when it comes down to it, who is to say what is a word and what is a phrase beyond how you write it?  And the "line" they held when I was in school was that orthography didn't mean squat.  I personally disagree, but there you go.  Maybe the phrase doesn't act as a discrete lexical unit, but maybe it's a nonconcatenative dealy-oh.  Man, language just all sucks.  What was I thinking majoring in linguistics?
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: kojabu on November 29, 2005, 03:40:19 PM
What's the English translation of that German spiel?  
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: Brinestone on November 29, 2005, 03:52:04 PM
little children business institute

This was the name proposed first by the man who invented kindergarten. Luckily, he decided on the name that has stuck.
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: pooka on November 29, 2005, 03:53:54 PM
We could have always called it the KKDGSTGSS :fear:  
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: kojabu on November 29, 2005, 04:00:16 PM
Can each of those prefixes stand on its own?  
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: Brinestone on November 29, 2005, 04:10:15 PM
More like KKGA.
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: Brinestone on November 29, 2005, 04:12:38 PM
Klein = little
Kinder = children
Geschaeft = business
igungs = not sure what this means, but it's a suffix that cannot stand alone
Anstalt = institute

So most of them are complete words on their own. German likes to jam words together, not just add prefixes and suffixes, though they do plenty of that too.
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: Icarus on November 29, 2005, 06:40:24 PM
:huh:

Is there a lost first page to this thread?
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: kojabu on November 29, 2005, 06:53:41 PM
It spawned from either the pie thread or some other thread on the other side of the forum.

Ruth: Klingon's weird because all the stuff that gets put together can't stand alone, unless it's the primary verb or noun.  
Title: Klingon Linguistics
Post by: kojabu on December 15, 2005, 02:19:43 PM
Wee I got an A on the paper.