tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Apr 29 22:12:28 1998

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: pab mu'mey



At 15:52 98-04-29 -0700, Voragh wrote:
}: How would a Klingon describe tense, or when to use the definite
}: or indefinite article, for example?  A basically pointless
}: exercise, I guess, but somehow the concept fascinates me.
}: 
}: -- ter'eS
}
}WRT articles, if you read Russian, you can look at any of the many English
}primers and grammars available to see how they do it.  Like Klingon, Russian
}has no articles whatsoever yet seems to do perfectly fine without them.

I think ter'eS means, how would a Klingon describe articles, were he to be
discussing English?  I suppose it would be the same as any language does,
they make up a word for the concept that isn't in their language, or they
take the word from the first language they encounter that has described the
feature.  Russian for grammatical  article is "artikl'" (the ' in Russian
softening the sound of the l) or "chlyen."  The former is pretty clearly a
loan word, and the latter is a generic word meaning "part" in several
different senses.

I expect the Klingon for "article" is something like {'artIq}, assuming
English was the first language with articles studied by Klingon grammarians.  

Qov     [email protected]
Beginners' Grammarian                 



Back to archive top level