tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Dec 26 14:37:11 1996

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RE: Klingon CD-Rom



December 25, 1996 9:32 PM, jatlh Edy Fonseca:

> Recently I gave myself the Klingon CD-Rom :))) Two things gave me very 
> intriguish. The 1rst one is openning where  Gowron speaking in 
> tlhingan-Hol. I could understand nothing (I'm a begginer, off course)

Don't worry about it.  No one seems to know what he said.  It's very badly 
done.  Still, there are a few recognizable words in it.  I hear {SuvwI'} 
several times.

> and 
> the 2nd one when the Gowron is talking with the Pakled commander and he 
> said something to T'Var (to be silent, I think).

Yes.  He says (badly, again), {yItamchoH!}  It sounds more like *{yItamacha}.

> Other thing, It's quite difficult for me undertand the grammar. 
> In English I can say: The World Cup Final Match. 
> In Portuguese I say:  O Jogo Final da Copa do Mundo. 
> Except for the article "The" = "O", the rest of the sentence is totality 
> inverse and I have to use 2 prepositions "da" and "do". How can I say it 
> in Klingon?

Klingon doesn't have prepositions.  When you are referring to possession, such 
as "the officer's knife," or "the knife of the officer," the noun which 
represents the owner ({yaS} = "officer") comes before the noun of the thing 
owned ({taj} = "knife").  Thus, "the officer's knife" is {yaS taj}.

English (and Portuguese I am sure; I don't speak it) uses prepositions for 
much of its grammar.  For example, I might say "I eat in my room."  "In my 
room" is a preposition.  But Klingon doesn't have them.  Instead, special 
suffixes and positions indicate the meaning.  In this example, the Type 5 noun 
suffix {-Daq} is used to indicate the location of the action: {pa'wIjDaq 
jISop}.

> Hearing the CD-Rom, it'll be very easy to learn the phonems, because it's 
> very similar than portuguese, except "tlh" - this is very gutural and 
> very difficult.

Really?  Portuguese uses many of these sounds?

> Thank you. (How can I say "thank you" in klingon?)

Literally, it's {qatlho'}.  {tlho'} means "thank," and {qa-} is a verb prefix 
meaning "I" subject and "you (singular)" object.

However, I wouldn't expect to hear many Klingons running around and saying 
{qatlho'} very often.  It's not a very Klingon thing to say.

-- 
SuStel
Beginners' Grammarian
Stardate 96988.1


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