tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jun 21 22:11:50 1996

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: KLBC: Dishonoured by my actions



~Doq writes:
>vIlegh vavwI' SoSwI' je    [I see my mother and father]

Since your parents are the object of the sentence, they must come
before the verb.  You surely know this; you just slipped up here.

>lajbeHbe' juhwIj           [My house is not prepared to welcome them.]

"My house is not set up to accept..." accept what?  I think a sentence
like this calls for at least a pronoun to resolve the ambiguity of the
null verb prefix.  {chaH} at the beginning would clarify it a lot.
(Interesting translation of "welcome" here, by the way.)

>tlhIngan Hol jIghItlhtaH   [I continue to write Klingon]

There's an object here; the verb prefix should be {vI-}.

>juhwIj vISay'be'           [I do not clean my house for them]

"I am not clean my home."  {Say'} means "be clean"; "clean" would be
{Say'moH} "cause to be clean".  There's nothing in the Klingon that
says "for them" -- to add it, you would put {chaHvaD} at the front.

>batlh jIvangbe'            [I have misplaced my honor]

"I do not act with honor."  It's an okay translation of the idea, but
why do your english words differ so much from the Klingon ones?

>jIpwIj 'oH bIj Hegh ghap   [Punishment or death is my penalty]

In a "to be" sentence, an explicit subject must have the suffix {-'e'}.
This is probably open to debate, but I think each of the nouns in the
combination should get {-'e'} individually rather than trying to put a
noun suffix on a conjunction.  Adding that suffix would also help to
indicate that {bIj} and {Hegh} are nouns here; since they can also be
verbs, this sentence was a little hard for me to parse at a glance.

>jIlajrup                   [I am prepared to accept.]

That's exactly what it says, but in context, this seems like a very
strange thing to say.  Do you mean you are prepared to accept your
penalty?  Even if you don't explicitly write the object, or even a
pronoun representing it, the object is implied; the verb prefix would
make more sense to me as {vI-}.

>One question--what's the difference between <batlh> and <quv>?

{batlh} "with honor" (adv), "honor" (noun)
{quv} "be honored" (verb), "honor" (noun)

The adverb and verb meanings are obviously distinct; the issue must be
what, if anything, distinguishes the noun meanings.

I see them like this:  {batlh} refers to the code of actions that define
the behavior of an honorable warrior.  {quv} refers to something like a
gesture of respect or a token of esteem which causes someone to be honored.
But I'm basing this on my own particular reading of the glosses; there's no
canon usage that gives me any reason to think this way.

-- ghunchu'wI'               batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj




Back to archive top level