posted
I dug up "Statistical Probabilities" (DS9) and listened to the scene where we hear Weyoun's "Dominionese." He says (here I'm using the vowel system of most Italic European languages), "Hizhano mano hova, bali zhen korada sento." This corresponds to the English sentence, "On the balance, we are giving up more than you."
"Hizhano mano hova" seems to be the phrase translated to "on the balance." The latter isn't commonly found in English; most people just say "in the end," or "all in all." I'm guessing the universal translator chose the longer phrase because the Dominionese phrase is about that length. Unfortunately, since the English translation is colloquial, we can't really do further analysis.
When Weyoun says the next part of the sentence, he uses some helpful hand gestures. It goes, "bali" (points to himself), "zhen korada," and then "sento" (pointing to whomever he's negotiating with). Now, the translation is, "we are giving up more than you," but Jack makes a big deal about how the original sentence uses the "passive voice transitive." Sentences using the passive voice have the receiver of the action as the subject ("I hit the ball" is active, whereas "the ball was hit by me" is passive). Transitive sentences have an object as well as a subject, which I suppose would be the noun in the by-construction in English. So, a more accurate rendering of the sentence in English must be "more would be given up by us than you." Or, due to the order according to the gestures, "by us more would be given up than you." So, the correspondence must be, "bali" means "by us," "zhen" probably means "more," "korada" means "would be given up" (assuming the conditional is preserved, and it should be), and "sento" is "than you."
Breaking it down further, "korada" seems to be a coherent, inflected word, since Weyoun doesn't seem to say the syllables as separate words. From this, I'm assuming that Dominionese is largely inflecting, although this is just an assumption. "Bali" might be two words, but going with the inflectional model, it would be "us," in either nominative or accusative case, or maybe some special case. "Sento" is thus "you" in the comparative case.
------------------ June is National Accordion Awareness Month. "Have you heard Alanis Morisette trying to play the harmonica? She doesn't know how to play the harmonica. Well guess what, Alanis, I INVENTED the 'don't-know-how-to-play-harmonica-harmonica-solo.'" - John Flansburgh
[This message has been edited by The Shadow (edited June 07, 2000).]
posted
What kind of sentence is "You have way too much time on your hands "? Passive Transitive? Whatever?
------------------ "Ultra Magnus is Undeniably Fun!" David Stevens, New York Magazine. "Total Complete excitement from start to finish!" -WPIX-TV, New York "This isn't a thrill ride, it's a rocket..." -Richard Caves, Time Magazine.
[This message has been edited by Ultra Magnus (edited June 07, 2000).]
------------------ June is National Accordion Awareness Month. "Trekkies like to claim that Star Trek is 'hard science fiction'...in some extreme cases, they even go so far as to claim that it's all technologically feasible! Do they say this because they've analyzed the events of Star Trek for scientific accuracy? Not a chance - most of them don't know a coulomb from a joule, or the difference between Young's Modulus and Dave's burger special." - Mike Wong
posted
Well, if we look at it word by word, we may not get to far because one word has many forms. Like the verb to be can take many forms such as "was", "is", "were", "am", etc. And we also have to think that this was just a bunch of writers coming up with a foregin sounding sentence just to make it sound good on tv. So any analysis you make is just a waste of time.
------------------ It doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing as long as you look good doing it.
posted
The whole show is something made up by writers. Any discussion we have of it on any of these boards is a waste of time. But, then, if you didn't have time to waste, you wouldn't be here, would you? :-)
------------------ "I know the whole bible! The New and Used Testaments!" -Thurgood Stubbs, The PJs
posted
As far trying to make an analysis of a language the only one you can really do is Klingon since Marc Okrand went to a great lenghts to make it alien but also close to a real language. Whatever Weyoun says is just a bunch of words made up by the writers.
------------------ "If at first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you." Federation Starship Datalink - On that annoying Tripod server.
I'm fairly certain there's no r in the first word...
------------------ June is National Accordion Awareness Month. "Trekkies like to claim that Star Trek is 'hard science fiction'...in some extreme cases, they even go so far as to claim that it's all technologically feasible! Do they say this because they've analyzed the events of Star Trek for scientific accuracy? Not a chance - most of them don't know a coulomb from a joule, or the difference between Young's Modulus and Dave's burger special." - Mike Wong
posted
I was getting at the whole language thing. The only 'real' language that was ever used was Klingonese. All other ones are just what sounds good at the time.
------------------ It doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing as long as you look good doing it.
Besides, even Klingon wasn't consistent. Okrand may have made a dictionary for it, but the writers didn't use it always. If they just needed a single word to toss in, they'd make something up if they didn't feel like looking it up.
------------------ "I know the whole bible! The New and Used Testaments!" -Thurgood Stubbs, The PJs
[This message has been edited by TSN (edited June 09, 2000).]
posted
I meant analyze something worth analyzing. One sentence of a language doesn't provide anything close to a glimpse of what a whole language is like. Also, english is a language and can you say it's consistent?
------------------ It doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing as long as you look good doing it.
------------------ June is National Accordion Awareness Month. "Trekkies like to claim that Star Trek is 'hard science fiction'...in some extreme cases, they even go so far as to claim that it's all technologically feasible! Do they say this because they've analyzed the events of Star Trek for scientific accuracy? Not a chance - most of them don't know a coulomb from a joule, or the difference between Young's Modulus and Dave's burger special." - Mike Wong
posted
Ahhh Frank, but how else would he make that "gutteral" noise at the end of the first "word" with out it being too harsh... a slight, one roll "r" would work.
------------------ "chocolate cherries allamanda" - Datura, Tori Amos
"? Passive Transitive? Whatever? 
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