tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri May 29 22:48:59 1998

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Re: KLBC: nom



QInmey ngo'qu' vIjangnIS...
I've got some very old messages lying around that need to be answered...

ja' Edy:
>[Peace is not a gift from God, but a conquer of the Spirit]
>    "roj nobbe' joH'a'. roj chav qa'" or "roj nobbe' joH'a'. chav qa'" sounds
>good also. But I still prefer "roj nobbe' joH'a'. qa' chav 'oH" once {'oH} is
>refering to {roj} not {joH'a'}.

{qa' chav 'oH} would mean "It [peace] achieves the spirit."  It's backwards
from what you want: {'oH chav qa'}.  Putting the pronoun {'oH} in there is
not necessary, especially with the parallelism of the two sentences, so it
serves to emphasize the object somewhat.  "The spirit achieves *it*."  If I
were saying this, I'd not want to draw attention away from the word {qa'}.

>I'm not able to understand  "That avoids the weak and noun-centric phrasing of
>using {'oH} as a verb." yet. Of course, the more we study the language, the
>more we see clearer these minutie.

{qa' chav 'oH} can be interpreted as "It is an achievement of the spirit."
But as a matter of style, I think using a "to be" pronoun when there is an
equally valid way to say it using a real verb is a sign of lazy translation
from another language.  It's especially bad in this case, where the word
{chav} might be misinterpreted as a verb.  Klingon seems to be at its best
when describing actions, referring to what things *do* rather than merely
labeling what they *are*.

-- ghunchu'wI'




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