tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 02 17:38:54 1998
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Re: KLBC -- jIlIHegh (extreme beginner)
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC -- jIlIHegh (extreme beginner)
- Date: Fri, 2 Jan 1998 20:36:55 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
- Priority: NORMAL
charghwI'vo':
Qov and I may both answer this one, since it is replying to me,
but has KLBC on it. I was only temporary BG. Soon this sort of
thing will sort itself out.
On Thu, 1 Jan 1998 12:50:47 -0800 (PST) Falling
<[email protected]> wrote:
> In a message dated 97-12-26 23:33:58 EST, you write:
>
> > Welcome, notjISaH. Since you knew to put KLBC in your header,
> > I'll assume you already know about Beginners' Grammarians and
> > KLBC, etc.
>
> Yeah, I've been receiving (and mostly not being able to read) the mailing list
> for a couple of weeks.
>
> > valqu'ba' loDnI'lIj.
Oops. HIvqa' veqlargh.
> valqu'bej 'ach QaQ meqwIj'e' Hon. pIj mutlhob <<qatlh Hol 'oghlu'pu'bogh
> Daghoj DaneH?>> tlhIngan Hol vIlo'laHbe''e' Qub loDnI'wI'. jIQoch.
You seem to consistently confuse the pronoun {'e'} with the noun
suffix {-'e'}. Except for the spelling, they have nothing to do
with each other. You need to change {meqwIj'e'} to {meqwIj 'e'}
and change {vIlo'laHbe''e'} to {vIlo'laHbe' 'e'}. The pronoun is
its own word. It does not get attached to the preceeding word.
Except for that one consistent error, these sentences are
nothing short of stunning for one with so little experience with
the langauge. I said earlier that people were likely lining up
to shoot you. I should assure you that ghuy'Do wa' was also 17
when he proved himself to be so impressive with the langauge
(though he spent a little more time than you picking it up) and
nobody killed HIM.
Or at least I don't THINK anybody killed him. He DID dissappear
from the list a few weeks after the qep'a' he attended...
> (He is certainly very intelligent, but he doubts that my reason is good.
> (assuming {meq} to mean "rational thought" or something similar) He often
> asks me "Why do you want to learn a language that someone has invented?" My
> brother thinks that I won't be able to use the Klingon Language. I disagree.)
Good to give the English, though everything you wrote was quite
understandable without it.
> Wow, there is a lot of opportunity here for the oh-so-desirable English poetic
> parallel structure...
>
> > > ghomvamDaq jIchu'. DaHjaj jIHvaD TKD
> > > nobpu' loDnI'wIj.
> >
> > All this is fine with one little comment.
> > {-pu'} does not mean past tense. It means perfective aspect.
> > Your English translation says, "...my brother gave me...".
> > That's simple past tense. Klingon doesn't have tense, so past
> > tense is simply figured out from context. You set the time
> > context with {DaHjaj} and considering how well you've done up to
> > this point, we'd have to assume it was earlier today that you
> > got your TKD.
>
> So it should simply be {DaHjaj jIHvaD TKD nob loDnI'wI'}? I didn't write the
> verb that way because of what TKD said in the introduction to the Aspect
> suffixes (4.2.7)... "The absence of a Type 7 suffix usually means that the
> action is not completed and is not continuous." It seemed like the action was
> completed, a discrete event. He gave it to me. The giving is over. Maybe
> I'm still confusing the tense/aspect thing, or maybe I should simply translate
> more carefully. I don't mean to question what you say here at
> all...apparently it's pretty basic and accepted, etc....I just don't
> understand what is meant by {nob} alone when there is a past-tense time frame
> from the context.
The problem here is that the time context {DaHjaj} is long
enough to include both the action and the completion of the
action. It is true that today your brother has given you the
book, and it is true that today your brother gives you the book.
See? You could say this morning your brother gives you the book
and this afternoon your brother has given you the book. This
kind of time reference becomes more specific and the perfective
makes more sense.
If your brother gave you the book yesterday, then {DaHjaj paq
Dunobpu'.} If he gives it to you this morning, then it is
misleading to say {DaHjaj paq Dunobpu'.} Instead, I should say
{DaHjaj po paq Dunob.} Now, we know when it happened. "This
morning he gave you the book."
> vIghorpu' -- I had broken it. / I have broken it. / I will have broken it.
> vIghor -- I broke it. / I break it. / I will break it.
>
> ???????
>
> Sure, but...how does the non-completion part fit w/ {vIghor}?
Don't get too wrapped up about these verbs of brief action. In a
sense, they are complete so briefly after they are begun that
you could consider them to always require the perfective, but
consider that if the action occurs during the period you'd
consider to be the time setting of the sentence, then it is not
perfective. The perfective indicates the action happened before
the time reference of the sentence.
> (I've read the more recent, and very lengthy, posts on this topic, and I see
> how it's obviously supposed to work...I just can't wrap my brain around how
> it'd feel to a native speaker of Klingon to mark verbs with aspect instead of
> tense...)
Recognize that suffixes like this are meant to point to
something significant. If aspect is not important, leave it out.
You are marking the verb as different when you give it an aspect
marker. You are pointing out that it is significant that the
action is complete. Instead of looking at every verb, wondering
if it should have aspect marked, just leave it out. You will
find times when it feels really bad to not mark aspect. Those
will be the times when you should mark it.
> > As written in Klingon, it would translate: "Today, my brother
> > has given me TKD," or "Today, my brother had given me TKD," or
> > even "Today, my brother will have given me TKD." None of this
> > matches what you apparently intended, so you probably want to
> > omit {-pu'} here.
>
> I translated that suffix as "gave" because some of the examples in TKD (4.2.7)
> under {-pu'} are translated into simple past or
> whatever..."wanted"..."told"...so i assumed it was acceptable. I should've
> been more precise, under the circumstances. AND I need to get access to and
> study a lot more canon, apparently...
Okrand is not especially tight with many of his English
translations, which is good in terms of having people believe
that Klingon expresses things naturally, but bad in terms of
teaching the finer details of the meanings of the suffixes. He
also changed the meaning of the {-pu'} suffix during the writing
of the book and likely did not catch all his earlier references
to it as simple past tense.
> > > tlhingan Hol ghojmeH vIqeqtaH.
> >
> > You probably want {jIqeqtaH} instead of {vIqeqtaH} unless you
> > are implying "it" as the object. What you have is not wrong, but
> > it does not match the English translation below. That would have
> > required {jIqeqtaH}.
>
> Hmmm...looks like I was too set on the English phrasing. I was thinking "I am
> practicing it." as in "I am practicing Klingon." From what you wrote, I'm
> assuming "it" representing "the language" is not a jarring indirect object for
> {qeq} in Klingon, and the problem was just with my mismatched translation.
>
> > While {ghojmeH} works here as is, it would be a little more
> > precise to say {vIghojmeH}, since you really are the one person
> > who will learn because you are practicing. {-meH} verbs are used
> > without a prefix sometimes, but this setting is not a
> > particularly good one for this. Again, what you have is not
> > wrong. It would be better with {vI-}.
>
> OK, I understand. Because of the {-meH} I guess I wasn't properly considering
> the phrase as a whole.
>
> > > jIwebeghpu'be' 'e' vItul.
> >
> > This is the worst mistake you've made so far. Realize that it is
> > remarkable that you wrote this much for your first attempt and
> > only made these minor errors. You should be proud.
>
> mmm, cool, thanks for the encouragement...
>
> > Your first mistake is an honest one. {-'egh} always begins with
> > an apostrophe. There is a typo in TKD where it is left out and
> > you probably learned it from that one instance.
>
> Oh, boy!! Break out the red ink! :-)
>
> > > wa'maH' Soch ben boghpu'.
> >
> > Except for forgetting the right prefix, this is perfect. Who was
> > born seventeen years ago?
>
> wa'maH' Soch ben jIboghpu'.
>
> {ben} is a noun, but the entire "17 yrs. ago" phrase is adverbial or
> something, not an object...or at least that's my reasoning for using {jI}.
It is a time stamp, like {DaHjaj} or {wa'leS}. It tends to go at
the beginning of a sentence, even before most adverbials. It is,
in a sense, an adverbial, since it describes a property of the
verb. It tells us when it happened. You are correct about the
prefix.
> > > Hello. (Is "nuqneH" an appropriate general greeting, or should it only
> be
> > > used in a context where the "what do you want?" thing makes more sense?)
> >
> > People fight over this here a lot. Some people will lecture you
> > every time you use it in a setting where it would not be
> > appropriate to say in English, "What do you want?"
>
> LOL...soon after I sent this, a whole debate sprung up on the topic in another
> mail!! Your examples were helpfully illustrative, so thanks a lot.
>
> > Anyway, I think there is something about names on the FAQ you
> > were supposed to have gotten when you joined the list. You might
> > check at http://www.kli.org. I think there is a link to such
> > things...
>
> Qu'vatlh!!! jabbI'IDghom lIHbogh *FAQ*Hom'e' vIlaDpu'. *website* *FAQ*
> vIlaDpu'be'. jeH jiHlaw'.
Close. {jIjeHlaw'.} But YOU knew that. You just got excited and
started writing too quickly...
> poHvatlhDaq *website*Daq *FAQ* vInejpu'be'.
A few people may give you a hard time about {poHvatlhDaq}. It is
a great translation for "at that time", if you don't think about
things like the difference between time and space. English mixes
them up all the time, but we are not sure that Klingon considers
time to be something you can locate with {-Daq}. We do know that
you can use {-vam} to mean "current", as in {DISvam} = "this
year" because Okrand has specifically confirmed it in a message
on MSN, (during one of the VERY rare appearances he has made
there), but he never addressed {-vetlh}. At least, I assume you
meant {-vetlh}. I don't understand what the word "hundred" would
be doing there.
Anyway, I am unsure any variation on {poHDaq} will work. {-Daq}
points to the spacial location of a thing. We may stretch it
here for things like {jabbI'IDghomvamDaq} to say "on this
message list", but that level of abstraction is still less than
{poHDaq}.
Instead, you want something like {jabbI'IDghom lIHbogh
*FAQ*Hom'e' vIlaDDI'...}. That will give you the time stamp you
want. {jabbI'IDghom lIHbogh *FAQ*Hom'e' vIlaDDI' *website*Daq
*FAQ* vInejpu'be'.}
> chotu'moHDI' vIlaD. Supvam vIlo'pu'chugh qay' jIH Quch law' jIH Quch puS.
Ummm. I think you reached a little far on this one. You got an
amazing amount of it right. You left the {qay'} floating in
space for no particular grammatical reason. Drop it and put a
{DaH} before the second {jIH} and I would have understood it.
"If I had used this resource I would be happier than I am now."
You didn't do anything to contrast the cha' {jIH}.
> translation:
>
> AGGGHHHH!! (insert appropriate curse....if that's directed at a person besides
> myself, I apologize, I meant it only as an exclamation.) I had read the
> shortened FAQ which introduced the mailing list. I had not read the website's
> FAQ. I appear to be absentminded. ( {jeH jiH} Hahaha!! I don't know about
> the spoken language, but these transliterations are so very musical!!!) At
> that time, I had not searched for a FAQ on the website. As soon as you caused
> me to notice [it], I read it. If I had used this resource, I would have been
> happier than I am happy.
>
> OK, I admit that it all falls apart on that last phrase. Can I put suffixes
> on verbs in that comparative formula?
Not usually. I've pushed it before to include {-qu'}, but even
that is likely a bit controversial. Since we have license to put
{-qu'} on verbs while they are used adverbially (as well as
{-Ha'} and {-be'}) then likely they are okay here. Others likely
screw things up.
> Essentially, reading the FAQ first could've saved me the trouble of figuring
> out how to introduce myself in the first place!! I apologize for the
> redundant question(s); I'm sure that can get annoying.
When somebody says, "I got the TKD today" and posts this much
well formed, complex Klingon text, we don't tend to be too
annoyed by anything they do unless they also show enormous
social skill deficits...
> A few more questions related to this passage:
>
> --The construction {poHvatlhDaq} does not seem very probable from what I have
> read. Can the locative suffix be used to mean "at" a time? Or would it maybe
> have to be some complex "During the time before ____some specific
> occurence___"?
{wej *verb*DI'}. "When *X* had not yet *Y*ed..." {wej qaSDI'
wanI'...}
> --chotu'moH..... "you cause me to discover/notice (something)"? One of the
> examples of the use of {-moH} in TKD 4.2.4 is {HIQoymoH}, and is translated as
> "let me hear (something)". This is the reason I felt semi-comfortable using
> the {cho-} prefix. However, the example I just cited is a command, so it
> might not apply....or I could be reading the implications incorrectly.
> Comment?
You did fine with {chotu'moH}. You caused me to find. qay'be'.
> > Yes. Okrand tells us that if the indirect object is first or
> > second person, this shortcut will work. Meanwhile, he said that
> > a while back on MSN, so it is not in TKD.
>
> Yeah, I picked that up in another KLBC post, but I wasn't sure enough to
> actually use it...now I've seen several references to it.
>
> > You got the overall grammar right. You just honestly misspelled
> > one suffix and omitted another. You were VERY close to correct.
>
> =) Hehe...somehow i doubt the old saying is gonna be appended to read
> "...horseshoes, hand-grenades, and Klingon grammar..."
Yep. Get your Klingon grammar incorrect, and you might become
quite concerned about horseshoes and hand grenades, though...
> > ghojwI' jIH. *University of Richmond, VA*Daq
> > De'wI'mey QeD yab joq vIHaDtaH.
> ..
> ..
> ..
> > > I am a student. I am studying
> > > computer science and/or psychology (QeD yab = "the mind's
> science"???)
> > > at the University of Richmond in VA.
> >
> > It would have been MUCH clearer had you repeated the word {QeD}.
>
> I see...I just had "computers" {De'wI'mey} originally, but it does make more
> sense to write the "science" part w/ that word too.
>
> > And that would be {yab QeD}, not {QeD yab}.
>
> Oops, that was a mistake; I was twisting the noun-noun stuff around in my head
> a good bit.
>
> > > I haven't really seen anything (I don't
> > > think) saying that wI' can modify the whole thing together.
> >
> > It doesn't have to. {Sut Say'moHwI'} means either "clothing's
> > washer" or "washer of clothing". The {-wI'} transforms the verb
> > "to wash" into a noun "washer". Once it is a noun, it can be
> > used in a noun-noun phrase with another noun.
>
> Cool, this is pretty clear now. Regular N-N translation, sure. I think I had
> the impression that something like this'd mean the washer of _a specific_
> "clothing," possibly as in one load of laundry. I have a better feel for the
> way those constructions can be used now.
>
> The rest of the corrections made perfect sense, and there wasn't really
> anything I could comment on...so i zapped'em...
>
>
> vay'mey mughojmoHbejpu'.
>
> (Heehee!! I just couldn't resist! That is supposed to read "You have
> definitely taught me some stuff (somethings)."
Take another look at that prefix.
> Interesting stuff, I might
> add. Mainly though, I just wrote it in hopes of finding out if the Klingon
> word {vay'} has the same pluralization oddities as the various English
> translations, or if we can feel it as a regular Klingon noun, just pulling the
> meaning from the English. Also, just to make sure: {ghojmoH} is actually
> listed in the dictionary part of TKD, so if I happened to want to use a type 2
> verb suffix with it, I should just treat it as an entire word, and NOT order
> things around the {-moH}? )
Not true. {ghojmoH} is in the dictionary because the dictionary
has two sides. One side goes from English to Klingon. If
{ghojmoH} was not listed, the word "teach" would not be listed
and you could not find the word "teach" unless you independently
figured out that to teach is to cause to learn, so you would
then look up the word "learn" and build your own word meaning
"teach". {ghojmoH} is just a normal {ghoj} plus a normal {-moH}.
"I am willing to teach you" is still {qaghojqangmoH.}
> > charghwI', taghwI' pabpo' ru'
> > Temporary Beginner's Grammarian, December 20-30
> >
>
> Thanks again. :-) Hope '98 is interesting!
In my case, it will be easy to be an improvement over '97. All I
have to do is not have my group household fall apart, not meet
any wonderful, magical new friends who get murdered two weeks
later, not fall in love with a woman who, after accepting my
courtship for three months gets breast cancer right as she
reveals that she is still involved with her earlier boyfriend and
gets pissed off because I don't politely accept the invitation to
leave so he can spend a couple weeks with her and not ask any
questions about it later, and not go straight from that to spend
Christmas holidays and my birthday sick with at least three
different colds (distinguisable by symptoms I can match with
friends who had dissimilar illnesses) in overlapping sequence.
If 1997 were an object I could hold in my hand, I'd torch it in
a heartbeat, toss it in my woodstove and sit back in a chair,
grinning as I warm my feet by its soothing glow. It would be
nice if it made whimpering sounds while it burned, too.
Yes. I have images of 1997 as a flaming tribble, scratching at
the glass door of a woodstove. Ahhhhhhh. I lean over and rub my
hands together, then hold my palms out to soak in the warmth.
"Hey, look! It's even cleaning the soot off the glass for me!"
[Big, toothy smile.]
1998 is getting better by the minute.
> --notjISaH
charghwI'