tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 25 13:56:29 2001
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RE: Those ever-lovable plural noun suffixes.
- From: Eric Andeen <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: Those ever-lovable plural noun suffixes.
- Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:54:39 -0700
charghwI':
> . . .
> Remember that pronouns are essentially irregular. They don't get
> plural suffixes. They are singular or plural by their arbitrary
> assignment as words. They don't have to follow the gender rules
> of other nouns. For all we know, they use the "he/she" word and
> not the "it" word to refer to body parts. Is there any canon that
> uses a pronoun to refer to a body part? I doubt it. So far as we
> know, it might be proper to say:
> roD SeHlaw vISIq 'ach rut DeSqIvwIj vIlo'. rut jeghwI' vIHIvmeH
> DeSqIvwIj vIlo'. Qu'mey law'vaD jIH vIlo'.
> How do we know I'd say, "I use it," and not "I use me" when
> referring to my body part. Well, so far as canon attests, I doubt
> we know at all. It's what we do in human languages, but we don't
> have examples in Klingon that I know of.
> . . .
I do know of one example, from Conversational Klingon. It doesn't answer
your question, and it probably contains an error, but it's still relevant. I
don't have a transcript of it anywhere, so this is from memory.
When the human tourist is at the Klingon restaurant, she asks the server how
she is supposed to eat since she has no utensils. The server replies
<ghopDu'lIj yIlo'>. The prefix should be <tI-> since the object is plural,
but CK is full of minor errors like this.
pagh