tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jul 02 06:47:44 2014

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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Too short

SuStel ([email protected])



On 7/2/2014 9:33 AM, Lieven wrote:
Am 02.07.2014 14:45, schrieb [email protected]:
Actually, the "SO" seems awkward in Klingon, to my ear.

Yes, to me too, actually. Was a bad example. About the {-mo'}, it's
again a point of punctuation and also one of intonation. It also shifts
the meaning of the phrase a little.

HoS, val, vaQ 'ej Duj Doj ra'mo' vIqIH vIneH.
It's not because of all the things, only because of the commanding part.

HoSmo', valmo', vaQmo' 'ej Duj Doj ra'mo' vIqIH vIneH.
Now IT IS because of all the things.

HoS, val, vaQ 'ej Duj Doj ra'. vIqIH vIneH.
Here I talk about things and about the fact that I want to meet him.

Original:

   tlha'a HoD vIHo': HoS, val, vaQ, Duj Doj ra'. vIqIH vIneH.

In my original, the causal links are only implied, not formally stated. There are two ideas in the complete utterance:

   I admire Captain Klaa (because) he is strong, clever, aggressive, and
   because he commands an impressive ship.

   I want to meet him.

Again, I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to force entire ideas into a single formal sentence. I'm mashing together as many formal sentences as it takes to make a single idea. Adding conjunctions and syntactic suffixes is trying to turn the whole into a single formal (compound) sentence. Punctuation is meta-information, and without an authoritative Klingon style guide we can use it as needed.

Here's an example from THE KLINGON WAY I just noticed that exhibits this behavior:

   bogh tlhInganpu', SuvwI'pu' moj, Hegh.

This is a single idea (the life-cycle of Klingons), and hence the proverb shoves three formal sentences together.

--
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/

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