tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Oct 01 00:21:47 1997
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Re: KLBC - New here!
- From: Qov <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC - New here!
- Date: Wed, 01 Oct 1997 00:21:28 -0700
At 05:54 97-09-30 -0700, lutmeyja'wI' wrote:
}I've just joined on here, and I hope to get to know you all.
Welcome. I see from your KLBC that you know the drill. :)
}You can
}call me {lutmeyja'wI} or Storyteller; don't expect any stories in
}Klingon, tho; that's my other major diversion right now, but I only
}do English. :-)
Don't be so sure. I think you could, right now, write a story on the
order of: "The man saw the targ. The targ saw the man. The targ bit
the man. The man yelled. The targ fled. The man bought a tribble."
Storytelling doesn't demand a huge vocabulary or mastery of grammar,
and it's an excellent way to practise.
}Well, here's my first attempt at a phrase (suggested by a friend as
}something Klingon-ish):
}I have a hangover that would kill a lesser man.
}lodHom HoHmoH 'e' jI'uH
I can follow your logic in constructing this sentence, but it
reflects English thinking and it doesn't quite work in Klingon. I'll
go through the sentence word by word, then suggest how to fix it.
In English when you say "a lesser man" you mean "a lesser
man than I." I don't think you're actually referring to some
male who falls short of the standards of manhood. But in Klingon the
latter is exactly what {loDHom} means. We normally translate
{loDHom} as "boy." It could be used of an adult male but it would
definitely imply that he was not worthy of being called {loD}. The
Klingon comparative structure is grammatically unwieldy and we don't
currently have a way to use it in a subordinate clause.
The verb {HoH} means "kill." It already has the idea of causation
attached, if you think of "kill" as equivalent to "cause to die."
Therefore {HoHmoH} means "cause to kill," as in {SuvwI'pu' HoHmoH
QeH} "Anger causes warriors to kill."
The word {'e'} can be translated as "that" but it is only used in one
of the many circumstances where English "that" might be used, the
"sentence-as-object" construction. English example: "I see that he
is tired." Note that that "that" (yes I did that^3 on purpose)
is optional: "I see he is tired" means the same thing. In Klingon:
{Doy' 'e' vIlegh}. {Doy'} - "he is tired" {vIlegh}
"I see [some object]" {'e'} - the object,
representing the whole previous sentence. It is not optional in
Klingon. In your sentence "kill a man" isn't the object of any verb,
so {'e'} is not a useful tool.
Now, {jI'uH} definitely translates as "I have a hangover" but the
idea of a thing possessed, or a thing existing at all, is not in the
Klingon. It's just a sensation, like "I am tired." You wouldn't say
"I am tired that would kill a lesser man." You'd say something
like "if a lesser man were as tired as I am now, the state would kill
him." Or you'd just not bother, because the idea doesn't sound as
neat that way.
And that's the cold fact about this sentence. Nice as it sounds in
English, it has no punch in Klingon. If you still want to translate
it, try saying:
"I have an extreme hangover. This state could kill an inferior man."
See section 4.3 for the suffix that intensifies a verb, section 3.3.4
for a noun suffix you might want to use, and section 4.2.5 to see how to
apply the idea of ability to do something.
If you want to say clever things in Klingon, you need to approach
them from a Klingon language mindset. And they won't sound so clever
when translated into English.
}Whaddya think?
I think you did pretty well for your first sentence. You have the right
prefix on {jI'uH} for "I have a hangover" and you put your object before the
verb in {loDHom HoHmoH}. Correct prefix and OVS word order is a good start.
lutlIj wa'DIch vIloSlI'.
Qov [email protected]
Beginners' Grammarian