tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Oct 14 15:15:52 1998
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Re: KLBC Tribbleball
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC Tribbleball
- Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 18:15:49 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
- Priority: NORMAL
My. How clever. I like the game you suggest, though you've got
some basic work to do before you describe it well using the
language.
On Tue, 13 Oct 1998 22:51:13 -0700 (PDT) Johnny Wilson
<[email protected]> wrote:
> lab pagh
"Nobody uploads." ? The gloss translation of {lab} is "transmit
data (away from a place)". From context in ST3, we can tell that
means away from the place that the person is standing who is
doing the transmitting. If I send you a message, {QIn vIlab.
QInvam DalI'.} I send; you receive. I upload; you download. I
don't see where this game has anything to do with transmitting,
however.
It is a good thing to post your own English translation WITH
your Klingon so people can see what you were trying to say, even
if you miss by a long shot.
> yIHmey qIp ghanjaq lo' HochHom chuq 'ovmeH maH
Word for word, using Klingon word order sort of, (okay, so I
just keep rescrambling the words until they make sense) I can
figure out that you were trying to say "In order that we
compete, we use a stick to hit tribbles the most distance."
Meanwhile, you are missing a few basic things about how to speak
the language. In no particularly illuminating order:
1. Verbs with {-meH} on them always PRECEED the noun or verb
that they modify. If we hit in order that we compete, {'ovmeH}
has to come before {qIp}.
2. Use verb prefixes, not pronouns, to indicate the subject
here. {ma'ovmeH maqIp.} What do we hit? {ma'ovmeH yIHmey DIqIp.}
What do we use to hit tribbles? {yIHmey DIqIpmeH ghanjaq wIlo'.}
Packing these two ideas into one sentence in Klingon is
challenging enough that you might want to just leave them as two
different sentences. If pressured, however, we can interpret
this second example to mean that {yIHmey wIqIpmeH} is modifying
{ghanjaq} instead of {wIlo'}.
I mean that instead of saying, "We use a mace in order to hit
tribbles" we can say, "We use an in-order-that-we-hit-tribbles
mace." It is a special kind of mace that is only used to hit
tribbles. That allows us to have one {-meH} clause modifying a
noun and another one modifying a verb.
ma'ovmeH yIHmey wIqIpmeH ghanjaq wIlo'.
"We use the in-order-that-we-hit-tribbles mace in order that we
compete."
I'm not positive how to squeeze in the "the most distance".
Perhaps just put {DoS HopDaq yIHmeyvam DIvo'} as a second
sentence. "We propel these tribbles to a distant target." Maybe
add:
QapwI' DoS Hop law' Hoch Hop puS.
"The winner's target is the most distant."
That's a comparative sentence.
So we get three sentences to completely convey this meaning:
ma'ovmeH yIHmey wIqIpmeH ghanjaq wIlo'. DoS HopDaq yIHmeyvam
DIvo'. QapwI' DoS Hop law' Hoch Hop puS.
I would suggest that you begin with something simpler, since you
need to work on using prefixes with verbs and other more basic
Klingon grammar, but the idea you came up with here was such a
delight, I'm hard pressed to give you a hard time over
translating it so badly.
> Qapla'
charghwI' 'utlh