tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 12 21:28:42 1994

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Re: tam poHvo'

According to Peter Garza:
...
> I was kind of surprised not
> to find a word for "to do."  Did I just glance over it, or does it
> just not exist (yet)?
... 
> Peter Garza

	Not as such, and especially not with the kind of global
use we get out of "do" in English. {ta'} works in many
instances, meaning "accomplish". Meanwhile, "do" is one of
those verbs we most typically use when we nominalize a verb
that would be left as a verb in Klingon. "I do my work," is
better stated as "I work." "I do my chores," becomes "I
accomplish my tasks." "I do want chocolate," becomes, "I very
much want chocolate." "I do lots of stuff," becomes, "I
accomplish many tasks." "I do a good Worf immitation," becomes,
"I very much act in the manner of Worf."

	The trick is to begin with simple tools and expand on
them, recasting the idea behind the English statement to fit
the tools available in Klingon. The most common error is to
begin with "What's the Klingon word for 'do'?" When you do
that, you have already eliminated your potential for speaking
Klingon well because you are not going from a thought to a
Klingon statement. Instead, you are going from an English
statment to a Klingon statement, and instead of figuring out
how to convey the thought in Klingon, you get lost in a search
for all the replacement Klingon pieces for the English pieces.

	As an analogy, begin with a picture, which is the
thought, then cut it up into a jigsaw puzzle, in which the
pieces are the English words. If you want to express this
picture in Klingon, you need to look at the picture, then draw
it again with Klingon pieces. You cannot always pull out an
English puzzle piece, replace it with a Klingon puzzle piece,
and repeat that process until the puzzle is now expressed in
Klingon. Language does not work like that.

charghwI'

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