tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 05 19:04:00 1998
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Re: KLBC translation exercises
- From: Qov <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC translation exercises
- Date: Mon, 05 Jan 1998 19:03:20 -0800
At 17:14 98-01-05 -0800, chas wrote:
}laHwIj je qechwIj tIch Qov.
} Qov insults my abilities and my ideas.
The conjunction {je} goes after all the nouns it joins, not between them.
{laHwIj qechwIj je tIch Qov} (you could also say {laHmeywIj qechmeywIj je}
to make the plural explicit.
}nIteb jIyaj'egh. latlh muyajbe'.
} I alone understand myself. Others do not.
I intended {jIyaj'egh jIH neH}. What is the difference? I hear {nIteb
jIyay'egh} as "on my own I understand myself" the implication being that you
work out your understanding of yourself on your own, without outside
intervention. {jIyaj'egh jIH neH} emphasise that "only *I* understand
myself" which was the meaning I intended.
I'm glad you saw that the whole verb had to be repeated in Klingon, unlike
the English "do not," but you have the word order mixed up. The subject is
"others" {muyajbe' latlhpu'} The ambiguous {latlh} is fine, too.
}rap *English* mu' law' tlhIngan mu'mey 'oSlaH vIyaj.
} I understand that the same English word can represent
} many Klingon words.
} ["tera'ngan" for "*English*" seems too ethnocentric]
I know you know about the OVS word order because you got it right in the
first sentence, but it looks like when you have more to think about you
forget. Always object-verb-subject, in every clause. A verb describing a
noun, like {mu' rap} "the same word" goes after the noun, not before it.
Read about sentence-as-object (SAO construction in section 6.2.5. When the
object of a verb other than {neH} is the action of another verb, the word
{'e'} is used to separate the sentences and act as the object of the second
verb.
{tlhIngan mu'mey law' 'oSlaH *English* mu' rap 'e' vIyaj}
}This is a good idea, these practice exercises.
And that was a credible effort at practice sentences at a level above what I
would have set for you. You did a good job at picking the easiest ones to
try, too.
Try these:
Tribbles and targhs do not resemble one another.
I know you like tribbles.
Your tribble's mouth is ugly.
That stupid tribble ate my lunch all up.
I am definitely very angry.
My targ will certainly eat your tribble tomorrow morning.
You will regret that you didn't put your tribble in a cage.
If you apologize I will not kill you.
If you do not apologize my targ will enjoy a second meal.
Why does Qov keep writing these silly sentences?
Qov [email protected]
Beginners' Grammarian