tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 18 17:39:07 1995
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Re: Sentence structure help.
On Wed, 17 May 1995, Jim Boniface wrote:
> On taking alot of people's advise, I've been ATTEMPTING to
> translate some of the all tlhingan messages from the list. Is there some
> sort of trick to it, while I can translate each word, putting them into
> english to where they'd make sense it where I'm screwing it up bad. Any
> suggestions?
maj. bIpo'choHmeH yImughtaH. If you can translate each of the words
individually, then I think you've accomplished the hardest part. It
seems that the next thing you need to focus on is syntax, that is, the
grammatical pattern the words are placed in to form a sentence. Klingon
syntax is not very difficult, with few exceptions, every sentence uses the
same basic pattern of word order. The meaning of the words themselves
can vary depending on where they are placed among the other words of the
sentence.
It's hard to know what kind of trouble you're having without some
specific examples. A particular sentences you can't figure out
may be using a particular grammatical rule you're not familiar with or
you may be struggling to read a badly written sentence.
My suggestion is, the next time you can't figure out what a sentence
means, just ask. As Beginners' Grammarian, my job here is to help
everyone learn Klingon. If you want assistance in translating any
Klingon sentence without being flamed, just put KLBC in the heading
and ask for help. If I can't figure out what the sentence means, it's
probably a very badly written sentence.
> Jim
yoDtargh