tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Oct 07 16:26:16 1996
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Re: Klingon Symbol (grammar)
- From: Mark Mandel <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Klingon Symbol (grammar)
- Date: Mon, 07 Oct 1996 19:19:58 -0500
ghItlh Dark Viper (mI'mey vIchelta'):
>>>>>
tugh *KLI* jImuvlI'! [1]
HolQeDmeyvaD ngo' Huch vIghajbe' 'e' 'oH qay''e'. :( [2]
SuvwI' mIp 'oH SuvwI''e' val. :) [3]
<<<<<
As this isn't under a KLBC header, I'll waste some company time
}}};-)\ correcting it.
1. You're going to join the KLI. majQa'! But that makes the KLI
the object of <-muv->, so you need to use the prefix that means
"I - he/she/it", namely, <vI->:
vImuvlI'
2. <-vaD> applies not just to <HolQeDmey> but to <HolQeDmey ngo'>.
It goes on the end of the whole phrase; see TKD p. 50.
HolQeDmey ngo'vaD
With that fixed, the first four words mean "I don't have the money
for old _HolQeD_s", but the rest is garbled. I think you meant to
say "It's a hassle that I don't have..." The trouble is that to
say that you have to make "I don't have..." be the subject of "be
a hassle" (with "it" standing in for it grammatically in English);
but we can't make a sentence into a subject. And <qay'> is only
listed as a verb ("be a hassle"), not a noun (*"a hassle"). The
best that can be done -- and it's good -- is to make two sentences
of it. ("What is a single sentence in English is often two
sentences in Klingon." TKD p.65)
HolQeDmey ngo'vaD Huch vIghajbe'. qay'.
If you want to be explicit, you could supply an appropriate noun
as the subject of <qay'>, e.g.,
HolQeDmey ngo'vaD Huch vIghajbe'. qay' ghu'vam.
but it's hardly necessary.
3. Two corrections here. A warrior is sentient (a language-user),
so you need to use <ghaH>, not <'oH>, in the pseudo-"to be"
construction (p.68). I know how this happened, because I've done
it enough times myself: we get used to this construction with
nonsentient subjects and we get to feeling that <'oH>
automatically goes into it. But DON'T tell a Klingon
<SuvwI'na' 'oH vavlI''e'> !
(Grammatically, if you used <'oH> here you'd have to use <-lIj>
rather than <-lI'>, but by this point you'd already be in serious
danger, and at least with <... 'oH vavlI''e' ...> you'd have a
chance of convincing the Klingon that it was a slip rather than an
intentional slur.)
Second, <-'e'> is a Type 5 noun suffix, like <-vaD>, so what I
said about #1 applies here too:
SuvwI' mIp ghaH SuvwI' val'e'.
tlhInganna' SoHmeH, tlhIngan Hol yIlo'taH!
marqem, tlhIngan veQbeq la'Hom -- Heghbej ghIHmoHwI'pu'!
Subcmdr. Markemm, Klingon Sanitation Corps -- Death to Litterbugs!
** Mark A. Mandel : [email protected] **
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
=> KLINGON PAGE! http://www.dragonsys.com/klingon/klingon2.html <=