tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 01 16:10:51 1995
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Re: KLBC: E pluribus unum
>Date: Wed, 1 Mar 1995 17:15:19 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: [email protected] (Steve Weaver)
>KLBC:
>I've been trying to get this for about a month now and nothing seems right.
>I've settled on two different ways of saying "E pluribus unum" (out of
>many, one), but I can't convince myself that either are correct. Please
>review the constructs and explain why they are wrong. Thank you.
Hrm. You picked a tough sentence to start with. Note that the original is
verbless. I'd think we should have to lose that in the translation, since
we don't really have much evidence for verb-free sentences in Klingon.
Your examples seem to have verbs... but too many of them.
>a) wa' law'choH moj
Huh? "one changes-tomany becomes"? Think about it... how many verbs are
there I see two main verbs and no way that they conjoin or subordinate.
And what's the subject? Some "he/she/it"? I'm lost. Maybe...
wa' lumoj Dochmey law'.
>b) law'vo' ghoS wa'bogh
OK, you've made two very simple mistakes here. These are things you should
catch just by being a little careful. What is "law'"? It's a verb, isn't
it? And "-vo'" is a noun suffix. Oops. Similarly, "wa'" is a numeral,
which can sometimes act like a noun. So what's theverb-suffix "-bogh"
doing on it? These are errors that you probably could have caught just by
analyzing your sentence and thinking about it (it doesn't take a Grammarian
to see it, I mean. This is not meant to chide you for "wasting my time" or
something silly like that, but pointing out that you can find these things
youself and *learn* about what they mean simply by paying attention. Never
let a word go by without breaking it down: what is the root? What are the
suffixes? Are they the right ones for the root-type? Are they in the
right order? Look at sentences: What is the main verb? Is there only one?
What is the subject? The object? Is the prefix right? These questions
can get tricky, but you can certainly find a lot of mistakes even if you
only see the cut-and-dried cases). Not sure about "ghoS" here; that sounds
more like physical going. Maybe "lIng" or something? (wa' lIng Dochmey
law')
>I've also been trying to figure out if the "A Q law' B Q puS" construct is
>applicable here or not, but can't really think of a way to say it that way.
I don't really see that it's at all applicable; we don't really have a
comparison.
~mark