tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 02 02:59:39 2015

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[Tlhingan-hol] "Like that".

Will Martin ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">This morning, walking to work, I noticed a car turning around in the street and doing a really bad job of it. I thought, “Why is he driving like that?”</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Then, as I often do when talking to myself like that, I thought about how I’d say it in Klingon…</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">… until I realized that I don’t know how to say it in Klingon. At least not as an equivalent question. I can obviously stretch the verb “pilot” to say {qatlh ‘orlI’…} and then I don’t know how to say, “like that.”</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I considered saying {Huj ‘orlI’ghach.} I could even turn it into a question. {qatlh Huj ‘orlI’ghach?}</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Suddenly, I realized that there’s a relationship between adjectives and adverbs that can massively expand Klingon vocabulary in the area of adverbs. We don’t have a lot of them. We can’t say, for example, “He is walking weirdly.” But we can say {taQ yItlI’ghach.}</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">We don’t have an equivalent mechanism for turning nouns into verbs, so we can’t use adverbs like {nom} or {QIt} to describe a fast car or a slow computer. We can fall back on applying it to verbs describing what the noun is doing quickly or slowly, but how do I say “I want a faster computer,”? I’m tempted to say {De’wI’ vIneHbogh nom law’ De’wI’ vIghajbogh nom puS.} but that doesn’t work because {nom} is not an adjective.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">nom vumlaH De’wI’ vIneghbogh ‘ach reH QIt vum De’wI’wIj.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Well, that assumes that we can use two adverbs on one verb, and we don’t really have license to do that. I guess I could say:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">nom vumlaH De’wI’ vIneHbogh ‘ach QIt vumtaH De’wI’wIj.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">It works, but it’s kind of sad.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Or “We need our fastest runner to deliver this message.”</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">{QInvam wIHIjnIS. qetchu’ ‘Iv?}</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Weak, but I guess it works.</div><br class=""><div class="">
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