tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Sep 15 15:14:07 1998
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RE: How do I say... (ATTN: pagh)
- From: "Andeen, Eric" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: How do I say... (ATTN: pagh)
- Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 15:10:06 -0700
lab StaZ:
>
> you know, I was looking through a newpaper from V-Day last
> year, and they ran just about evewry way to say those words
> "I love you". Well, the Klingon way is in there... and I
> don't think that it is right, I think they just made it up.
> tell me what you think...
> "Qabang"
> now, the word love is definatly in there... but I have never
> seen <Qa>. I have seen <Qa'>, which means animal, and I have
> seen <qa'> which is spirit... so what am I missing? Did they
> make it up?
I've seen this too, on a web site somewhere. It's definitely not right,
but I see what they were going for. To start with, whoever did this did
not realize the importance of capitalization. What they were going for
was <qabang> - The prefix <qa-> plus the word <bang>.
That is half right. The <qa-> verb prefix indicates the subject is first
person singular (I) and the object is second person singular (you).
Unfortunately, the second part, <bang>, is a noun meaning "loved one",
and cannot be used as a verb. It's kind of like saying "I friend you"
instead of "I like you".
Klingon donesn't have a verb for "love" that we know of, but there are
other things we can do. We do have verbs for "disklike" - <par>, and
"hate/detest" - <muS>. We know that <parHa'>, which is <par> plus the
suffix <-Ha'>, means "like", so we often use <muSHa'> to mean "love". We
don't know whether Klingons commonly do this or not, but that's our best
guess.
So my guess at a translation for "I love you" is <qamuSHa'>.
pagh
Beginners' Grammarian