tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Mar 22 08:36:52 2014
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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] The Legend of Gorath part 1
> From: gheyIl
> You all make good points. I hadn't intended for {'oH} to refer to the
> cave, but if Lieven read it that way, then so the better. English
> sentence fragments come easily because of SVO, but with no 3rd person
> prefix in Klingon, and the fact that the object comes first ... we'll
> just have to wait for the some 1st generation speakers to show us how
> it's done. :-)
>
> I want a ... ehm ... a beer. {vay' vIneH ... mm ... chaq HIq}
So how do English speakers start a sentence when they haven't figured out the subject yet? Let's say a military commander wants to send someone on a mission, but he hasn't decided who yet. He could say, "Someone is going on the mission ... mm ... perhaps Jones." More likely, he's just going to wait until he has figured out how to start his sentence and then say, "Jones will go on the mission." But a Klingon could start the sentence before he knows the subject: "{Qu' ta' ... mm ... malth.}"
When ordering food it is convenient that the thing being ordered is the last thing in an English sentence so we can start the sentence before we know what we want. "I will have ... a beer." But I'm thinking a Klingon just wouldn't start the sentence until he knows the object.
Because English speakers learn to say the subject first, they think of the subject first. So it seems natural to go ahead and start a sentence where you know the subject but haven't figured our the object yet. I'm not at this point yet, but I'm thinking that to really think in Klingon you have to learn to be able to think of the object first the way that English speakers think of the subject first.
So then, how do you translate a sentence fragment from English. You just have to accept that you won't be able to directly translate the fragment as English and Klingon will use different fragments. You could make a guess as to what the whole sentence would have been in English and translate a different fragment - and in that way force your interpretation of the fragment on the listener. Personally I prefer to come up with something generic enough that it is still open to the listeners' interpretation. {'oH...} worked great for that very reason. Who knows what he was going to say before he realized it had gone into the cave? Who cares? He abandoned that sentence!
Jeremy
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