tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 22 19:36:12 1994

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charghwI'vo' taghwI'vaD:
[From charghwI', for the benefit of beginners:]

       Being accused of being less than supportive of beginning Klingon 
students, I feel an acute drive to make ammends by offering something
potentially useful to those beginners. I'll offer a sentence in
English and then walk through translating it into Klingon, and then
take a Klingon sentence and walk through translating it into English.
I'll put quotation marks around the English and curly brackets around
the Klingon version.

     Grammarians, please correct any errors I may have introduced. Beginners,
please respond about any points that are not clear to you. As for the rest of
you, vuDlIj DaHubmeH vuDwIj DaghuH. {{:)>

"I want to write something to help beginning Klingon students."

       This is perhaps an intermediate level sentence, but I figure that
walking through the process should make it simple enough to be useful.
First, we look at "I want". 

       The verb stem is {neH} for "want", and what we are really saying 
here is that I want it. Here, "it" is the rest of the sentence, 
so it follows the pattern described in TKD 6.2.5, page 65-67. 
The latter part of that section applies specifically to this verb, but it is
good to read the entire section to get a better idea of what is going on
here.

       The complete verb is {vIneH}, which means "I want it." In this case,
the "it" is "to write something to help beginning Klingon students".
In 6.2.5, we learn that {vIneH} is going to come at the END of our
finished sentence, so if you are speaking, you'll just have to REMEMBER
{vIneH} for now.

       Next, let's look at "to write". That is an infinitive in English.
Klingon doesn't have infinitives. By that, I mean that in English,
"to write" just hangs there in space somewhere. No one is doing the
writing. The writing did not happen specifically in the past, it is 
not specifically happening now, and it does not specifically happen
in the future. Like infinity, it has no beginning or end. Verbs
can't do that in Klingon.

       In Klingon, a verb exists only in the form that tells you who or
what is doing the action, and if there is an object, what sort of object
is the verb being done upon. In this case, while in English I say, 
"I want to write something," in Klingon, I say that like "I want that 
I write something."

       The verb stem for "write" is ghItlh (a genuine challenge to those
unpracticed at pronouncing Klingon). We add the same prefix to this
stem to say "I write it." It becomes {vIghItlh}. The word for "something"
is {vay'}, so "I write something," is {vay' vIghItlh}. Remember that
the object (the thing that receives the action of the verb) comes before 
the verb and the subject (the thing doing the action) comes after the verb.

       In this case, we don't need a separate word for the subject because
the subject "I" in English is already handled by the {vI-} prefix in
{vIghItlh}. We do use a separate word for "something" in order to make
more meaningful the object "he, she or it" implied in {vI-}. This does not
mean that we drop back to {jI-} as the prefix because the object is stated by
{jay'}. The "it" is still needed in the prefix. {jay'} just tells us more
about "it".

       At this point, our complete Klingon sentence is {vay' vIghItlh vIneH}.
It means, "I want to write something." It could also mean, "I want to write
somebody," as in "I want to write to somebody," since {vay'} is vague
enough to include that definition, but for now, it doesn't matter that much.
Either interpretation still conveys pretty much the same thought.

       Now, we seek to add "...to help beginning Klingon students." This 
could be said several different ways. We could look up the word "help"
and start working with the verb stem {QaH}. Again, "to help" is an
infinitive, so in Klingon, we get more specific and say, "I help them."
The same prefix works here, so {vIQaH} means "I help them."

       So how do we tie {vIQaH} into {jay' vIghItlh vIneH}? Well, what I am
REALLY wanting to say is "I want to write something for the purpose that
I help them." Check out TKD 6.2.4 on page 64-65. Here, we learn that we
want to use the suffix {-meH} and we want this verb to come in the front
of the sentence. Now, "I want to write something to help them" becomes
{vIQaHmeH vay' vIghItlh vIneH}. More literally, it means, "I want that
I write something for the purpose that I help them."

       Now, we want to add, "beginning Klingon students." First, we have to
realize that the English sentence implies that these are Klingon LANGUAGE
students, so to be clear, we should be more explicit in the Klingon.
"Klingon language" is {tlhIngan Hol}, which more literally means,
"language of a Klingon." {tlhIngan} is a noun, not an adjective, and
this is a noun-noun construction (TKD 3.4).

       A student is one who learns, so the word is {ghojwI'}, or more 
literally, "learner" (TKD 3.2.2). The plural is {ghojwI'pu'}. "Students
of the language of a Klingon" are {tlhIngan Hol ghojwI'pu'}. This is an 
extention of that noun-noun construction.

       So how do we add "beginning"? Hmm. I personally feel uncomfortable
trying to use the verb stem {tagh} as an adjective. I also feel like
saying "the students who begin Klingon language" is less true to
my meaning than "the beginners who learn Klingon language", so at this
point, I recast this part of my sentence. We get the "who" from the
suffix {-bogh} and use a "relative clause" (TKD 6.2.3) to get
{tlhIngan Hol ghojbogh taghwI'pu'}.

       This is slightly ambiguous, since it could also mean, "the 
Klingon language, which is learned by the beginners." The context
of the larger sentence would probably clear this up, though
Krankor has proposed and Okrand agreed that this would be an
appropriate place for the {-'e'} noun suffix to point to the
focus of this clause. (TKD 3.3.5, page 29)

       Putting together everything, we get:
tlhIngan Hol ghojbogh taghwI'pu''e' vIQaHmeH vay' vIghItlh vIneH

       I will add an alternative sentence as well. Instead of using
the verb for "to help", we could have used the {-vaD} noun suffix,
which means, "for the benefit of", also in TKD 3.3.5, page 28. This
recasts the sentence to something closer to, "I want to write something
for beginning Klingon students." It comes out as:

tlhIngan Hol ghojbogh taghwI'pu'vaD vay' vIghItlh vIneH

       More literally, it says, "I want that I write something for the 
beginners who learn a Klingon's language." Notice that we cannot have
both {-'e'} and {-vaD} on the same noun, since they are both type 5
suffixes. In this case, the presence of {-vaD} gives us a strong
indication that we are talking about the beginners and not the language
in this phrase, so we don't need {-'e'}.

       This is longer than I expected, and it is late. I'm writing it
at home, though I will send it from work. jIQongnIS. I need to sleep.
I hope someone out there finds this useful. Perhaps later I will
fulfill the promised Klingon to English walk-through.

charghwI'

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