tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 13 21:41:44 1998
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Re: My first try at tlhIngan Hol KLBC
ghon van HI'rIp jang Qov:
>}*Holland*vo' jIH.
>
>maj.
>[...]
>'ach *America*vo' ghaH *Bill*'e'.
>
>Recognize that construction? :) It's that same pronoun as to be.
>Literally: "But as for Bill, he's from America"
I must protest this usage of pronoun-as-be. It's a splendidly direct
translation of the English, but it doesn't fit my understanding of the way
Klingon pronouns can be used. TKD section 6.3. "To be" gives two ways to
use pronouns: one as sort of a categorizer ("you are an officer" or "they
are children") and the other in the sense of "be at a place" using the noun
suffix {-Daq}. There's no mention of using {-vo'} to mean "be from a place".
Indeed, there's no hint that any kind of "to be" can be translated at all,
except for the two explicitly detailed in TKD 6.3.
-- ghunchu'wI'