tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed May 07 08:21:01 2003
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Re: KLBC: {cha'}?
From: "Quvar valer (Lieven)" <[email protected]>
> Am 07.05.2003 00:13:31, schrieb David Hand <[email protected]>:
>
> >Thinking about this more: How ought I to express "oneself" as the
indrect
> >object?
>
> > "Napoleon crowned himself emperor"
> > "Give yourself more money"
> >
> >I suppose the first case could be expressed "Napoleon promoted himself
> >to the rank of emperor": {voDleH patlhDaq num'egh "Napoleon"}
>
> Okay, the grammar is correct. But the words seem to bother me.
> I'm not sure if a "rank" is a place/location where you can use n#5 {-Daq}.
It's not. /-Daq/ and /-vo'/ are only used in a spatial sense.
> And then, {num} is a transitive verb, yes, but I'm not sure about the
meaning of "promote"
> The KLI has once been honoured by Marc Okrand, because we "promote" the
Klingon Language:
> {tlhIngan Hol Danummo' pIquvmoH}
> But promoting to a rank...
That's a vocabulary issue we don't have information on, I believe.
We do have an appropriate word: /gheS/ "take on the duties of." It doesn't
imply going from a lesser rank to a greater rank, but it will work for this
sentence:
gheS'eghmoH *Napoleon*. voDleH moj.
Napoleon made himself take on the duties of emperor.
(Literally, "Napoleon made himself take on duties. He became emperor.")
As always, there's no reason why what is one sentence in English must be one
sentence in Klingon. The grammar of the two languages are sufficiently
differently to often require different ways to express the same concept.
If you want to assume that /num/ can mean "promote (to a higher rank)"
(which, given the starship-heavy terminology of TKD, seems to me to be the
likely case), you can use it the same way:
num'egh *Napoleon*. voDleH moj.
Napoleon promoted himself to emperor.
(Literally, "Napoleon promoted himself. He became emperor.")
> >Would the second would be {SoHvaD Huch law' yInob}?
> majQa'!
>
> Some people might prefer to do this using the "prefix trick" (more on that
later):
> {Huch yInob'egh} "give yourself money"
No! Take that back, you evil fiend! :)
The prefix trick is about prefixes! It doesn't work with suffixes! David
had it right: /SoHvaD Huch law' yInob/ "Give money to you." It sounds funny
in English, but I know of no reason to say the same about the Klingon.
(That's not to say I've proven that it works, I'm just saying that one
should keep one's native language biases out of the formation of Klingon
sentences as much as possible.)
The prefix trick would be used in cases where a first- or second-person
non-subject non-object is taking on the semantic role of indirect object,
and there's a third-person object. For instance:
jIHvaD Huch yInob!
Give me money!
can become
Huch HInob!
Give me money!
(It's quite obvious to me that Okrand created the prefix trick to cover
numerous mistakes of English to Klingon translation. He thought, "I want to
translate 'Give me the ro'keg bloodpie,'" and translated it too literally:
/ro'qegh 'Iwchab HInob/. You'll notice that the prefix trick exactly
parallels English usage of non-prepositional indirect objects.)
SuStel
Stardate 3347.1