tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Oct 10 00:12:11 1998
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RE: yuchmey
- From: "Andeen, Eric" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: yuchmey
- Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1998 00:11:16 -0700
- Importance: Normal
lab K'ryntes:
> yuchmey jIleghpu'. SIbI' luSoplu'.
> This is the first thing I wrote without consulting references! :D
> Except for the -pu'. I wasn't sure if I needed that since the second
> sentence would show that it had already happened. And I didn't know
> if using -lu' would be right since the subject isn't really unknown.
> I wanted it to translate as, "I saw chocolates. They were immediately
> eaten."
The prefix on <legh> should be <vI->.
I'm not sure you can use <yuch> to mean a single piece of chocolate, or
whether it can only be used as a mass noun like <nIn> or <chuch>. I doubt,
for instance, you would call a bunch of ice cubes <chuchmey>. I don't know
that it cannot apply to an individual piece of chocolate, but it's best to
take the conservative approach with vocabulary. Fortunately, you could just
as easily say "I saw chocolate. It was eaten immediately." I'm glad you got
the <lu-> prefix right - it is often forgotten - but this change means you
have to take it off.
The <-pu'> is not necessary, and doesn't fit with your meaning. If you
include the <-pu'>, you were done seeing the chocolates by the time people
ate them, which is not what you want.
<-lu'> is perfect here, unless you are saying YOU ate them, which would be
<... vISop>. Even if you did, you might well use <-lu'> anyway, especially
if you don't want everyone to know it was you who ate them. Of course, that
is not particularly honorable behavior ...
This leaves you with:
yuch vIlegh. SIbI' Soplu'.
pagh
Beginners' Grammarian