tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jan 22 10:02:23 1998
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Re: KLBC: mu'tlheghmey
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC: mu'tlheghmey
- Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 13:01:44 -0500 (EST)
- In-reply-to: <[email protected]> (message fromQov on Wed, 21 Jan 1998 01:10:26 -0800 (PST))
>Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 01:10:26 -0800 (PST)
>From: Qov <[email protected]>
>
>}<DujmeylIj mach DaQaw'>
>}
>}I'll allow Qov to do the teaching here, but in short, the Klingon sentence
>}is neither in past nor in present tense. (It's not future either.)
>
>Right. {DujmeylIj mach DaQaw'} is perfectly translated as "you destroyed
>your little ships" or "you will destroy your little ships" or "you destroy
>your little ships" Klingon simply doesn't have a thing you add to the verb
>to make it past or future tense, any more than English has a thing you add
>to the beginning of a verb to indicate the object. If the time of an action
>is important, you just say the time. {wa'Hu' DaQaw'} - "you destroyed them
>yesterday"
Indeed. Actually, for the line in the movie I personally would have used
"DaQaw'pu'" (or Daghorpu'), since the intent really is "you have broken
them", in the perfective. -pu' and not -ta', since if anything there's a
half-implication that it *wasn't* what he wanted to do. {rIntaH} might be
good too, with the implication of "look what you did and can't undo."
I'm not sure that DujHom isn't OK either, when it comes down to it: little
shiplets. Sure, in many contexts that would mean shuttlecrafts, but in the
context at hand I think it works.
~mark