tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Dec 13 22:41:18 1998
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RE: KLBC:choQaHneS
- From: "Andeen, Eric" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: KLBC:choQaHneS
- Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1998 23:39:32 -0700
- Importance: Normal
Welcome to the list. My name is pagh, and I am the current Beginners'
Grammarian. It's my job to help beginners learn Klingon. Whenver you have a
post you want help with, mark it for my attention by putting KLBC in the
subject line, like you have done here.
And as a general comment, it is a good idea to include an English
translation with your message for a while as well so I can better help you
correct the Klingon.
lab [email protected]:
> wa'DIch tlhIngan Hol jinID!
Always capitalize the I's.
<wa'DIch> is an ordinal number meaning "first", and it can only be used to
modify a noun or (possibly) as a noun itself. It follows the noun it
modifies:
Hogh wa'DIch - first week
pu' cha'DIch - second phaser
You don't really need the <wa'DIch> here, though.
You got the sentence order right in the rest of the sentence, but the prefix
wrong. When the verb (<nID> in this case) has an object of he/she/it (3rd
person singular), the prefix you need to use is <vI->, not <jI->.
> ghoj tlhIngan Hol jIneH.
Klingon doesn't have infinitives like the English "to learn" or "to think".
What it does have is a pronoun <'e'> which can refer to the previous
sentence. The way Klingon says "I want to do X" is really something like "I
want that I do X." As a result, the first part of your sentence should be "I
learn Klingon" - <tlhIngan Hol vIghoj>.
The rest of the sentence should be "I want that ...". The "I want it" part
is <vIneH> - prefixes again. The "that" part is interesting - with any other
verb, it would be the pronoun <'e'> to represent the previous sentence. In
one of the few exceptions to the rules in Klingon, though, the <'e'> is
omitted when the verb is <neH>.
tlhIngan Hol vIghoj vIneH.
> wa' Hogh vIlegh neH.
You've close to right idea with the <wa' Hogh> - Klingon puts timestamps
like "yesterday" or "next year" at the beginning of sentences. Your <wa'
Hogh>, though, is a duration, not a timestamp, so you need to find a
different way to express it. The usual way to express a duration like this
is <qaStaHvIS X, ...> - "While X happens, ...".
You also got very close with <neH> here. When it is used to mean "only,
merely, just", it has to go after the word it modifies - <Hogh> in this
case.
qaStaHvIS wa' Hogh neH vIlegh.
> choQaHneS.
lu'.
> chay' jitagh?
tlhIngan Hol mu'ghom yIje'. yIlaD. yIlaDqa'. yIlaDqa'taH.
Buy the Klingon dictionary. Read it. Read it again. Keep rereading it.
Seriously, though, the Dictionary is the essential reference for the
language. There are several useful supplementary references, and the KLI has
a good starting page (/kli/starting.html) which lists
them.
> chay' jiSoQmoH?
I really don't know what you mean here.
> mu' tlham jimIS
<tlham> is a slang word meaning "social order", so it doesn't work for "word
order". Its non-slang meaning is "gravity". The word I suggest is <pab> -
grammar. This is a good word for "word order" and all the other rules of the
language.
You also need to work on your grammar in this sentence. You said "I am
confused", wich is correct, but you just stuck the rest in front of it, with
no relation to the rest of the sentence. What you probably should say in
this sentence is "grammar confuses me" - <mumISmoH pab>.
pagh
Beginners' Grammarian