tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jul 06 19:58:23 2003
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Re: "How is your food?" "What book?"
> On 6 Jul 2003 at 14:07, Klingon Warrior wrote:
>
> > I'd like to know if I'm saying these two sentences correctly...
> > "How is your food?" /chay' 'oH SojlIj?/
You can't ask it this way. /chay'/ is asking for a procedure (ex., /chay'
Soj vISop/ "How do I eat the food?"). (It's not a general call for an
opinion.
Ask a more specific question.
'ey'a' Soj
Is the food delicious?
tlhorgh'a' Soj
Is the food pungent?
Soj vutlu'chu'pu''a'
Has the food been prepared perfectly?
> > "What book?" (As if someone asked me to grab a book for them and I
> > just don't see one to grab) /nuq paq?/
No, this means "What is a book?" (Okrand has said that /nuq/ and /'Iv/ can
work like pronouns in "to be" constructions.)
"What book?" isn't a complete sentence in English, so it's not exactly fair
to ask how it's said in Klingon. Try these on for size:
paq yIngu'
Identify the book!
paq yIpong
Name the book!
From: <[email protected]>
> For "What book?" doesn't "Where is the book" mean the same thing, in that
case its
> easy... /nuqDaq oH' paq?/.
Don't forget that when you've got nouns on both sides of a pronoun in a "to
be" construction, you must put /-'e'/ on the las noun. (And watch your
spelling: it's /'oH/, not */oH'/. Glottal stops are consonants too.)
nuqDaq 'oH paq'e'
Where is the book?
> and for "How's the food?" What about /Soj QaQ qar'a'?/ I think this is
literally, "The food
> is good isn't that so?"
When referring to food, it's not just "good" or "bad." You have to be more
specific than that. Calling the food /QaQ/ might be as strange as one of us
calling food "evil." It makes sense, but it's the wrong word to use.
There's a whole section of KLINGON FOR THE GALACTIC TRAVELER on food. This
describes a lot of qualities that Klingons desire to see in food (or that
they want food to bring out for them). It talks a lot about how to talk
about food.
SuStel
Stardate 3512.7