tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 26 18:21:13 1996
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Re: Stephen's introduction
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: Stephen's introduction
- Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 20:24:51 -0500
[email protected] writes:
>nuqneH Stephen pongwIj tlhIngan Dunbe' jatlhwI' jIH Mac ghaj jIH maHwej
>ben jIH QI'yaH Doch muS jIHvam
"whaddyawant? Steven my name. I am a speaker of not great Klingon.
Me have Mac. I am ten-three years ago. $#@%, this monitor hates things."
Hi, Stephen. You can call me ghunchu'wI'. I'm the Beginners' Grammarian
right now, which means that it's my job to help beginners like you who are
just learning Klingon. If you put the special code "KLBC" (Klingon Language
Beginners' Conference) in the subject line of a note, I'll try to give that
note special priority.
Let's see what help I can give you with your introduction. I'll try not
to look *too* annoyed at the {nuqneH} at the beginning, but unnecessary
introductory words are... unnecessary. :-)
The lack of punctuation in your note makes it harder to figure out where
to separate the sentences. In perfectly grammatical Klingon it's often
possible to figure out where one sentence ends and the next begins, but
not always. Some people don't like to use periods or commas in their
Klingon sentences, but they usually place each sentence on its own line.
>Stephen pongwIj
This sentence is missing a verb. In "proper" Klingon, every sentence
which isn't an exclamation (see TKD section 5.5) must have a main verb.
Klingon *does* have a way to say "is"; see TKD section 6.3 for a discussion
of how pronouns are used this way. Briefly, {'oH} "it" can mean "it is":
{pongwIj 'oH} "it is my name." An explicit subject may follow this verb;
if it is present it must have the "topic" noun suffix {-'e'}. So to say
"Stephen is my name" we write {pongwIj 'oH *Stephen*'e'}. [Notice that I
marked the non-Klingon word as a courtesy to someone who might otherwise
try to look it up in the dictionary.]
>tlhIngan Dunbe' jatlhwI' jIH
This does make grammatical sense, as I translated it above. I'm not sure
whether how I understand it matches how you intended it, though. Can you
let me know what you meant for this to say? That way I'll be better able
to help you say it correctly.
>Mac ghaj jIH
Don't ignore verb prefixes (see TKD section 4.1). In order for us to say
"I have it" we use the prefix {vI-} on the verb {ghaj}. The pronoun {jIH}
is then redundant, and if used it normally indicates emphasis (see TKD 5.1).
"I have a Mac" is then {Mac vIghaj}.
>maHwej ben jIH
The number-forming suffix {-maH} is a *suffix*. It gets tacked on *after*
the number: 30 is {wejmaH}.
"I am thirty years ago" or even "I was thirty years ago" (Klingon doesn't
explicitly indicate past/present/future tense) doesn't make a lot of sense
to me, though. Do you mean you were born then? Try using the verb {bogh}.
{wejmaH ben jIbogh} "I was born 30 years ago." Note the verb prefix here
is {jI-}; it indicates the subject is "I" but there is no object. The
phrase {wejmaH ben} simply indicates when the action occurs/occurred.
>QI'yaH Doch muS jIHvam
"$#@%, this monitor hates things." I don't understand what you mean here.
But this is a good start. You're not obviously just replacing words in an
english sentence with Klingon equivalents; you do have some understanding of
the grammar already.
-- ghunchu'wI' batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj