tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Oct 14 16:15:44 1998

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Re: KLBC - First Attempt!

You can stay, but your mailer has to go.

On Tue, 13 Oct 1998 18:27:49 -0700 (PDT) Bryan Potratz 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

Just send us plain text. Don't do this MIME stuff, if you can 
help it. I'll weed some of it out.
 
> qIm pagh - pongwI' jIwIvta' ja'=20

pagh will be back soon. I'm filling in.

While some will argue against punctuation, it would clarify your 
first sentence. {qIm, pagh.} That might be considered "clipped", 
but as it stands, it looks like you are saying, "pagh is paying 
attention." Better would be: {yIqIm, pagh.}

The second part looks like, "He said, 'My name. I have 
accomplished choosing.'" If you want to use {pongwIj} as object 
of {wIv} you need the prefix {vI-} instead of {jI-}. The latter 
indicates that there is no object, so {pongwIj} doesn't have a 
reason to be in that sentence.

To get your meaning across, drop the "reporting" stuff and just 
say:

pongwIj vIwIvta'.

I have accomplished choosing my name.
 
> nI' poHmey tera'ngan QI' jItoy'=20

"A Klingon may be inaccurate, but he is never approximate." 
Choose the number of years ago you were in the military and 
follow that number with {ben}, forming one word. If it was 
twenty years ago, then the word is {cha'maHben}. Some people use 
{ben} as a separate word, as in {cha'maH ben}. I'm sure voragh 
can point to an example that shows which is right. I'm drawn to 
model it after {wa'Hu'}, but I could be wrong. The truth is that 
the writing system we use is phonetic, not mimicking the Klingon 
pIqaD, so it is unlikely that we really know for sure whether 
{ben} is a number-forming element or a separate word. It would 
sound the same whether we spelled it with a space in the middle 
or not.

Also, look at your prefix on {jItoy'}. You want {tera'ngan QI'} 
to be a direct object. You need to use the right prefix on 
{toy'} to attach that direct object to it.
 
> lomqa' per yuD munobta' tera'ngan SuvwI'pu' *SEALS*=20

This is an interesting casting. You refer to a nickname as a 
"dishonest label". Is that an idiom I missed in KGT? If not, I'd 
go with {pongqoq}, a "so-called name". It indicates that it is 
not a real name. It might be better expressed as {maqoch pong}, 
since it is a name used only by your male buddies, right? As for 
your translation of "spook", well, who is to say you are wrong? 
A corpse-spirit. There is no word for "spook", so you have to 
make one up. The one you made up works for me.

Who am I to argue with a retired Navy Seal?

Realize that you used a grammatical shortcut when you said 
{munobta'}. ghunchu'wI' would be happier if you said:

jIHvaD maqoch pong <<lomqa'>> lunob tera'ngan SuvwI'pu' *SEALS*.

Meanwhile, who am I to argue with a retired Navy Seal? We know 
that using the pronoun to point to a second person indirect 
object instead of the third person direct object is allowed. It 
is a kind of shortcut, as I said, like the difference between 
saying, "Give me the knife," instead of saying, "Give the knife 
to me." You are not actually giving me. You are giving the 
knife. I am the indirect object. The direct object is the knife. 
Klingon allows an amazingly parallel grammar here. [charghwI' 
rolls his eyes and whistles as if Okrand was not mimicking 
English when he did this. These two languages just HAPPEN to 
have these coincidentally similar constructions.] 
 
> mo'chaj Ojatlh tuHwIjpu' mutu'Ha=20

You lost it on this one. Maneuvers are not beings capable of 
language, and you got the suffix order wrong, so that should be 
{tuHmeywIj}. The {mu-} on {mutu'Ha'} is not a successful 
shortcut here. It's just wrong. I don't understand the first two 
words at all. Thanks for including the English below. That saves 
the day here.

This is a complex sentence. It is not easy for me to say, and 
I've been doing this for a while.

tuHmeywIj Sam 'e' lunIDtaHvIS, peghtaHmo', lomqa' vIrurlaw'.

"Because my maneuvers continued to be secret while they tried to 
observe them, I apparently resembled a spook."

Note that {tu'} means "observe" as in, "I wasn't looking for 
it, but I observed it anyway," while {Sam} means, "I was 
looking for it and I found it." Your fellow Seals were 
definitely trying to find your maneuvers. They didn't try to 
just stumble across them. They were looking, and they didn't 
know exactly where to look. That's {Sam}.
 
My English here is a somewhat loosened translation because the 
word order in Klingon makes me tend to, like English, mention a 
noun first and replace repetitions of the noun with pronouns 
later (implied by the prefix), but since the word order is 
different in Klingon than in English, that means that I put the 
pronoun replacements in different places than I do in English.

I'll also say that there's a good bit of controversially complex 
grammar in my version. I know that I've never seen the second 
verb in a Sentence As Object used with {-taHvIS}, making 
it a dependent clause in yet another sentence. In this same 
example, I then took THAT main clause and added a Type 9 suffix 
to it making it a dependent clause in yet ANOTHER main clause. 
That's nesting the grammar much deeper than I've ever seen 
Okrand do it. I'm not positive it works. Meanwhile, it all 
parses to me. I suspect any experienced speaker could understand 
it. They might wince while they understood it, but it definitely 
can be understood.

I don't intend to show it to Okrand next time I see him, 
however...

> jIqeqtaH So'wI' vItuQwI' jIpo'wI'qu'

It looks like you worked hard on the earlier sentences, and then 
you got tired. This one is much simpler than you've made it:

jISo''eghchu'meH jIqeqtaH. jIpo'chu'.

"In order that I perfectly hide myself, I continuously trained. 
I am clearly skilled."
 
> -lomqa'

This is a good post. You had clear ideas you wanted to express 
and you did some clever casting to get much of what you wanted 
across well. You had some errors that are common for beginners, 
so you are getting the practice you need to improve yourself. 
For some of your sentences, you also reached a little beyond 
your skill level, which is exactly how one grows one's skill. 
Meanwhile, you didn't waste your time by making ALL of your 
efforts beyond your skill level.

The grammar you sought to use was driven by the thoughts you 
wanted to convey. Your dog wagged its tail. You did not let your 
interest in a particular grammatical construction drive you to 
say extraordinary things using that construction. That's the 
tail wagging the dog. A lot of that happens here. Thank you for 
not doing that.

And, after all, who am I to argue with a retired Navy Seal?

{{:)>

charghwI' 'utlh
 
> ------------------
> 
> Pay attention pagh, I am reporting my name.
> 
> A long time ago I was in Terran Military Service.
> 
> Terran warriors called "SEALS" gave me the nick-name "The Spook".
> 
> They called me this because they couldn't observe my maneuvers.
> 
> I constantly trained to be invisible. I am extremely skilled!
> 
> - The Ghost
> 
> Qapla'
> 
> Bryan Potratz - lomqa'

charghwI' 'utlh

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