tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Mar 03 06:57:13 2014
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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] when I was X (years old), from the age of X to Y
No suggestions, but a couple of examples of date-related canon to consider:
naH jajmeywIj betleH vIyanbe'
In my vegetable days, I did not wield a bat'leth. KGT
KGT 110: This expression was actually first heard in a speech in the original Klingon version of Shakespeare's "{'antonI' tlhI'yopatra' je}" in which the heroine refers to her own youth in this way. In the popular Federation Standard version of this play, {naH} is translated as "salad".
cha'vatlh ben HIq vItlhutlh
I will drink Two Century Old Ale. PK
And a post from the old Expert Forum:
_______________________________________________
From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: msn.onstage.startrek.expert.okrand
Date: December 12, 1996
...
But, anyway, here are my (grammatical, not philosophical) thoughts on age.
The word ben can be used to mean "years old," but in Klingon, one doesn't
say "I am X years old."
The phrase loSmaH ben jIH (loSmaH "40," ben "years ago," jIH "I"), if
anything, would mean "40-year-old me" or the like. It would parallel cha'
vatlh ben HIq "Two Century Old Wine" (cha' "two," vatlh "hundred," ben
"years ago," HIq "wine, liquor"). (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't
think the word DIS "year" is in that phrase on "Power Klingon.")
"I am 40 years old" would be expressed as:
loSmaH ben jIboghpu'
This is "I was born 40 years ago" (loSmaH "40," ben "years ago," jI-
"I," bogh "be born," -pu' "perfective"). As is normal in Klingon
sentences, the time element (in this case, loSmaH ben "40 years ago")
comes first.
_______________________________________________
N.B. "The phrase {loSmaH ben jIH}..., if anything, would mean '40-year-old me' or the like."
If anything, this might be worth exploring.
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons
> -----Original Message-----
> From: De'vID [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Monday, March 03, 2014 4:48 AM
>
> De'vID:
> >> We know that {loSmaH ben jIboghpu'} is how a Klingon would say "I am
> >> 40 (years old)". How would you say "when I was X, I did such and
> >> such"?
>
> QeS 'utlh:
> > Presumably anyone saying that would know how old they are now, and so
> > {loSben Qang vImoj} "I became chancellor four years ago" seems to me
> > the easiest way of putting it.
>
> But the listener/reader doesn't necessarily know the speaker/author's
> age, especially if the time at which those words were spoken/written is
> in the past.
>
> I am translating part of an autobiography. There is a sequence of "When I
> was X, I did such and such" in succession. The reader is not expected to
> know the author's age when he wrote those words.
>
> De'vID:
> >> {wa'maH cha' ben jIboghpu'DI' moQbara' vIghojchoH} seems to me
> >
> >> like it's saying the speaker is 12, and started learning Mok'bara at
> >> birth.
>
> QeS 'utlh:
> > True. How about:
> >
> > qaSpu'DI' DISwIj wa'maH cha'DIch moQbara' vIghojchoH.
>
> This is exactly the solution I arrived at myself. I had wanted to
> preserve the usage of {bogh} somehow as it felt more Klingon, but
> eventually resorted to year labeling as you suggest.
>
> De'vID:
> >> Also, how would you say "from the age of 20 to the age of 25, I
> >> studied the bat'leth under Kang"?
>
> QeS 'utlh:
> > qaSpu'DI' DISwIj cha'maHDIch, betleH tonSaw' mughojmoHpu' qeng
> > qaStaHvIS vagh DIS.
>
> But is it {vagh DIS} or {jav DIS}? 20 to 25 inclusive is 6 years. The
> author might be talking anywhere from 5 to just under 6 years.
> Rephrasing it in this way forces a particular interpretation.
>
> Actually, the original text is quite un-Klingon in its imprecision.
> The author actually says, "From the age of X to Y or Y+1, these events
> happened".
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