tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Oct 06 18:27:29 1994

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Re: Good day to die.

According to Thornton Rose:
> 
> 
> I think we are approaching the beating-a-dead-horse limit on this one, but I 
> feel motivated to try my hand at "Today is a good day to die", too:
> 
> HeghmeH jaj QaQ 'oH jajvam'e'.

Okay, from the top:

The verb "to be" does not exist in Klingon the way it exists in
English. In Klingon, there are two, and only two, ways to
express all our "to be" words, AND IT IS NOT OKAY TO USE BOTH
WAYS AT THE SAME TIME. Meanwhile, that is exactly what you just
did.

First, there is a large set of "adjectival" verbs that imply
the verb "to be" combined with an adjective. {QaQ} is one of
them. {jIQaQ} means "I am good." {QaQ 'oH} means "It is good."
{QaQ jajvam} means "This day is good." It should be noted that
using a locative ending like {-vam} on a temporal noun like
{jaj} is normal in English, but quite possibly weird in Klingon.

The other way to express "to be" is to use a pronoun with no
verb. {tlhIngan jIH} means "I am a Klingon." A variation on
this is to use the pronoun as a verb "to be" between two nouns,
the second of which needs the suffix {-'e'}. Note, this ONLY
works with NOUNS, implying that the two nouns are equal, or at
least that one is a subset of the other.  {tlhIngan ghaH
Holtej'e'}. Holtej is a Klingon.

In English, "to be" is used either with adjectives or nouns and
there is no grammatical difference. "My car is a Honda. My car
is red. Red is good." See?

In Klingon, the adjectives are always implied in adjectival
verbs. Nouns being equated to other nouns always "to be"ed by
pronouns. These are unrelated grammatical constructions. In
Klingon, for example, I can say {"Honda" 'oH DujwIj'e'} and
{Doq DujwIj.} Note that in Klingon, these are completely
different grammatical constructions. There is no way to say,
"Red is good," in Klingon.  I can say {QaQ Dochmey Doq} - "Red
things are good," but I can't say "Red is good" because
adjectives like "red" and "good" are verbs in Klingon, and a
verb cannot act as a subject of another verb in Klingon, and in
Klingon, every verb needs a subject.

Any attempt to say "Red is good" would require major recasting,
probably involving the description of {-ghach} we've all been
waiting for. Probably something like {QaQ Doqghach}. To be
honest, I'm a little sad to see this kind of nominalization
allowed. It destroys some of the unique character of the
language and makes it a little more like English. I think that
the translations that have been reworked in order to remove the
ubiquitous use of {-ghach} in earlier times on this list are
far more rich for the effort.

Still, one must adapt.

> Qapla'
> 
> Thornton

I hope this helps some. In English, we depend so much on "to
be". For those who have never heard of it, there is an
artificially created dialect of Engllish called "E-prime" which
is exactly like English, except that it uses no form of the
verb "to be". Try it out sometime. Don't try to speak it. You
will fail. Instead, write it and expect to edit your writing a
lot.

Meanwhile, things written in E-Prime contain a greater richness
in attention to the quality of the conveyance of honest
thought. One describes what one senses, without lazy and often
inaccurate judgements about the nature of things. One does not
casually speak of the future with presumptions and promises as
likely forgotten as kept. One merely states what one observes
and suggests what one believes. One respects the listener to be
capable of reaching their own conclusions about the nature of
things.

That last paragraph was written in E-Prime. This one isn't.

charghwI'

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