tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 06 19:00:02 1996
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Re: KLBC:1st Efforts
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: KLBC:1st Efforts
- Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 23:01:14 -0500
Robert Newcombe writes:
>toH, paq vItu'pu', tlhIngan Hol mu'ghom.
>...I hope the above states, A-Ha !, I found the book...
It starts out close, but where your translation trails off, the Klingon
sentence gets a little confused. If you really meant to say "I found
the book _The Klingon Dictionary_", you have inappropriately separated
the words {paq} and {tlhIngan Hol mu'ghom}. The examples we have of
this construction ("apposition") put the name immediately after its
description, so you need to say {paq tlhIngan Hol mu'ghom vItu'pu'}.
Except that {tu'} doesn't mean "find" the way I think you want it to.
Its gloss "discover, find, observe, notice" doesn't mean it has all the
meanings of all those words; I believe it means that it has the meaning
*common* to those words. I think the "find" you want is {Sam} "locate,
seek and find". So you would say {paq tlhIngan Hol mu'ghom vISampu'}.
Except :-) that your Klingon uses the verb suffix {-pu'} (perfective),
and your translation uses the word "found" (past tense). Klingon does
not explicitly distinguish between past, present, and future tenses.
The {-pu'} and {-ta'} suffixes indicate an action that is complete in
the context of the sentence, not with reference to "right now." The
sentence {paq vISampu'} means "I have found the book" -- or it might
mean "I had found the book" or "I will have found the book." Context
can help resolve the true meaning, or a "time word" like {DaHjaj} or
{cha'leS} can pin down the event completely.
>Now all I need to do is to sort myself out a name.
A name can be anything you want to answer to. As you say, *you* need
to sort it out for *yourself*.
-- ghunchu'wI' batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj