tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 07 08:28:26 1996
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Re: KBLC: Like
- From: "Mark J. Reed" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KBLC: Like
- Date: Wed, 7 Aug 96 11:08:00 EDT
- In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 7 Aug 1996 07:39:01 -0700. <[email protected]>
ghIthlh A.Appleyard:
\ "the act of him moving resembles a ray of light" wants to be **{tiH
\ wov rur <vIH 'e'>} (or {... yIvIH...} if he wanted imperative), but with
\ objections as above; or try **{tIH wov rur 'oH (yI)vIH 'e''e'}?
\
You should let a Grammarian answer a KLBC post before suggesting a solution
that involves such linguistic gymnastics. But since you've already jumped in,
let me make so bold as to offer some simpler alternatives.
First, though, let me note that {wov} is not a noun; it's a verb,
meaning "to be light" (as in bright). The compound {maSwov} provides
evidence that at least at some point in the past, {wov} was a noun, but
we have no indication that there is such a noun in modern Klingon.
Since it's not a noun, you can't use it in a noun-noun construct like
{wov tIH}. Try {tIH wov} "bright ray" - here the stative verb {wov} is
being used as an adjective. (Mr. Appleyard made this change sans
explanation in his post.)
To answer the question, we don't have any general solution to plug in
wherever "like" is used in English. We have several verbs that are
helpful in recasting English phrases containing "like", though. Two in
particular I think help in this situation: {rur} "resemble" and {Da}
"behave in the manner of". So you could say something like this:
vIHtaHvIS tIH wov Da "While it moves, it behaves like a light ray"
or
vIHtaHvIS tIH wov rur "While it moves, it resembles a light ray"
Both of these are 6 syllable lines, just the wrong length for a line of
haiku; but we do have canon in TKW for {-taH} being left out of
{-taHvIS} in a proverb, so it'd probably be okay to bend the rule similarly
for the sake of poetry:
vIHvIS tIH wov Da
You could try {vIHDI'} instead of {vIHtaHvIS}, but that comes out more like,
"as soon as it moves, it resembles a light ray" - not sure that's quite the
right meaning.
Or you could add an explicit subject pronoun for emphasis and make it the
7-syllable line:
vIHtaHvIS 'oH tIH wov rur
--
Mark J. Reed |
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