tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue May 14 21:14:18 1996

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Re: KLBC: Here we go again...

SajQa' writes:
>                "SuvwI' QIch ghoj Qu' ngeDbe'. qa'vIn vIghurnIs!"

"A not-easy chore learns warrior's speech.  I need to increase coffee!"

>What the heck I am trying to say is:
>
>It is not an easy task to learn the warrior's speech. I need more coffee!

English sentences which begin "It is..." do not translate easily into
Klingon.  "It" here is a pronoun which stands for another sentence which
is given later, and "it" is used as the subject of the first sentence.
We don't have a way in Klingon to use a sentence as a subject, so this
construction fails.  It must be rephrased before it can be translated.

{QIch} refers specifically to the sounds made by the voice.  If that's
what you mean by "warrior's speech", fine; but I suspect that you really
want to say the "warrior's language" -- {SuvwI' Hol}.

See TKD 6.2.4 "Purpose clauses" for a possible way to say what you want.
How about this?  {ngeDbe' SuvwI' Hol ghojmeH Qu'}
"The task in order to learn the warrior's tongue is not easy."
Fortunately, this doesn't seem to have any other legal interpretations
that *aren't* what you want.

"I need more coffee" also needs some recasting to get around the lack of
a simple word for "more".  Perhaps {wej yap qa'vIn vItlhutlhta'bogh}
"The coffee which I have drunk is not yet enough."  Or a bit simpler:
{wej qa'vIn yap vItlhutlhta'} "I have not yet drunk enough coffee."

>on on the subject of biting...:)...we were throwing it around again,
>after so many people commented that it might be taken up as an
>offer....so we tried of comming up with a way to say "Bite my Batleh!"
>
>Would that be yIchop betleHwIj!  --- or maybe just yIchop!  ....heh...heh..

No, it would be {betleHwIj yIchop}.  The object comes before the verb.

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

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