tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jun 01 18:43:56 1995
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Re: "be proud of"
Thu, 1 Jun 1995, ghItlh ghunchu'wI':
> But what DOES "be proud of" really mean in English, anyway? How else could
> you say it and mean the exact same thing? To "be proud because of it" says
> that "it" is the cause of your pride, and doesn't indicate anything special
> about what "it" is doing. When I say "I am proud because of you" to my son
> I am being selfish and denying him the benefit of my pride. If I say "I am
> proud of you" I am giving him praise. I think the {'oHvaD Hem} phrase does
> justice to the intended meaning of "be proud of it."
Here, the use "of" appears to be acting as a function word to denote the
application of the adjective "proud" to the following noun. Other
examples of this construction would be "I'm fond of candy" or "I'm sick
of my job".
The way I would like to say this in Klingon is to use Nick's suggestion
of using {'e'} to introduce the topic of the sentence, and say something
like: {jIHem [cleavage]wIj'e'} (With respect to my cleavage, I am proud;
I'm proud of my cleavage) or {jIpuQ Qu'wIj'e'} (As for my job, I'm fed
up; I'm sick of my job).
Unfortunately, we don't really have any canon use of {'e'} being used to
indicate the topic in this manner, other than in the copula construction:
{qoH ghaH HoD'e'} (As for the captain, he is a fool; The captain is a fool).
This is another item to go on the list of things to ask Marc Okrand: can
{'e'} be used to indicate the topic of a sentence outside the formula
presented in Sec. 6.3.?
> -- ghunchu'wI'
yoDtargh