tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun May 24 08:18:19 1998
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Re: Sum (was: Quj bej Holtej qorDu')
Holtejvo':
> In my mind, /Qu'vaD lI' De'/ is much more natural than /jIHvaD Sum Duj/ or
> /DujDaq jISum/. Perhaps you're right, and it's just interference from
> English.
How about {-vo'}?
{Dujvo' jISum} "From the ship, I am nearby".
(If {Sum} is intransitive, perhaps "be nearby" is a better gloss than "be
near," despite the printed translations. It underscores the fact that you
can't just stick an object on it.)
This may be an overload of {-vo'} with too many of the English meanings of
"from"; however, I think that "From (the point of view of) the ship" makes a
certain amount of sense. I don't like the other possibilities much:
{DujDaq jISum} I am nearby at the ship.
This seems to imply that the speaker is on the ship and the ship is near the
listener.
{DujvaD jISum} I am nearby for the ship.
The "for" here feels closer to the one in "I am here for you", but given the
broad range of {-vaD} this might work.
{jISum Duj'e'} As for the ship, I am nearby.
I toss this out there as a possibility, but it makes little sense in either
Klingon or English, since the subject of the sentence doesn't match the
topicalized noun.
One of the above may be correct, but perhaps none of them are. Perhaps, if
neither {Sum Duj} or {jISum} will carry the intended meaning unambiguously in a
given context, we have no simple way to resolve the ambiguity without
recasting.
IMHO, having to recast is a large part of the fun, and certainly of the
challenge, of using Klingon. One way to recast the above is with {joj} -
although there we have another problem. How do you say "the area between me
and the ship"? Can you have a compound as the first noun of a noun-noun
construction?
{Duj jIH je' joj} "The ship and me's (the ship's and my)
in-between-area"
If that works, then you could simply say
{mach Duj jIH je' joj} "The area between the ship and me is small"
-marqoS