tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jan 24 22:23:56 1998
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Re: KLBC: mu'tlheghmey
- From: Qov <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC: mu'tlheghmey
- Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 22:23:05 -0800
At 10:56 98-01-22 -0800, ~mark wrote:
}>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.
Now that I know that it was about model ships, I agree that DujHom is a good
choice.
Beginners: if there is context to your sentence that isn't immediately
obvious (I agree that a line from a Star Trek movie should have been pretty
obvious, but I didn't get it) point it out so that I can understand your
sentences better.
Qov [email protected]
Beginners' Grammarian