tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 26 11:16:06 1998

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Re: KLBC: Counterparts

According to TPO:
> 
> >...
> >SuStel
> >Stardate 98153.7
> >
> >P.S. You know when you completely blank on a perfectly common word: you look
> >at it and can't believe that that combination of letters makes up the
> >concept you're so familiar with?  That just happened to me with "happy."  It
> >looked so . . . weird.  {Quch} still clicked in my brain as usual, but
> >"happy" was totally alien.  My transformation must be beginning . . .
> 
> that happened to me yesterday.  I was thinking in english, writing english,
> uh-err, I wanted to anyways.  I wanted to write "all" and I wrote "Hoch".
> And many times, while using english, friends tell me I got my tenses messed
> up; I remind them klingon doesn't have tense.
> Now if I could just remember more words... : P
> 
> DloraH

My episode involved English passive voice subject for which I
used an object form pronoun... something like:

"I can't remember the person *whom* had been chosen."

In English, that is a mistake because "whom" is subject of "had
been chosen", so it should have been "who", not "whom". In
Klingon, the passive voice would have been translated <nuv
wIvlu'pu'bogh}, and {nuv} would have been object of the verb,
not subject. In essence, Klingon is right and English is wrong,
since the action of the verb is "to choose" and the {nuv} is
definitely the object of that action, not the agent, but the
passive voice is at least as weird as {-lu'}. I suspect Okrand
came up with {-lu'} just to point out how weird Passive Voice
is, though we don't usually notice its weirdness.

The improper use of "who" vs. "whom" is not a common error for
me, especially using "whom" for a subject. I was trying to
figure out why I made such an error when suddenly, it hit me...

charghwI'

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