Imperatives / command forms

How to get people to do what you want them to? You ask them to nicely!

Klingons are direct, so they don't waste time on words such as please. That means that a command such as yIngu"egh! Identify yourself! is not necessarily considered rude; it could be the equivalent of Excuse me, could you tell me who you are, please? A Klingon might consider such an unnecessarily complicated and roundabout question as rude and would see the directness of yIngu"egh! as much more polite.

yI-

The most important verbal prefix for imperatives is yI-.

It's used on all imperatives that have a grammatical object of him, her, it, no matter how many people you are speaking to. It's also used on imperatives without a grammatical object if you are speaking to one person.

For example, mara yISam! Find Mara! could be directed to one person or to several, but yI'Ij! Listen! could only be addressed to one person.

pe-

If you wanted to issue a command without a grammatical object to several people, you would use the prefix pe- instead, e.g. pe'Ij! Listen!

Note that the only time it matters how many people you are giving a command to is when there is no grammatical object. For all commands with a grammatical object, the same prefix is used whether you are giving the command to one person or to many. However, if there is no grammatical object, then you use yI- when giving the command to one person and pe- when giving the command to multiple people.

tI-

The prefix tI- is used whenever the object of the command is third person plural (them), e.g. tera'nganpu' tIngu'! Identify the Terrans! The same prefix is used whether you are speaking to one person or many of them.

HI-, gho-

HI- is used when the object is me and gho- is used when the object is us, e.g. HIvoq! Trust me! or ghovuv! Respect us! These are also the same regardless of whether you are speaking to one person or many.

-Qo' with imperatives

We have previously learned that statements are negated by using the negative verb suffix -be'. However, for imperatives, a different suffix is used for negation. Negative imperatives use the suffix -Qo'. For example, HIHot! Touch me! can be turned into HIHotQo'! Don't touch me!

The -Qo' suffix is officially grouped with the rover verb suffixes, but it doesn't actually rove at all. Even if there are more than one suffix on the imperative verb, the -Qo' suffix will occur last.

There are some circumstances where specific suffixes would follow the -Qo' suffix, but they do not occur with imperatives. You will learn about those later in the course. For now, if you are negating a command, place the -Qo' suffix at the end of the verb, after any other suffixes.

wej

The adverb wej appears at the beginning of the sentence and makes the sentence a negative sentence meaning, not yet. It is not used with negative suffixes like, -be' and -Qo' and can be used with statements, questions, and commands. For instance:

wej jagh wISuvpu'. We have not yet fought the enemy.
wej paq DalaD'a'? Didn't you read the book yet?
wej qoq yItI'! Don't fix the robot yet!

State verbs ("adjectivals")

When you form the command form of a verb that describes a state, rather than an action (the kind of Klingon verb that in English would often be an adjective, such as yoH be brave or matlh be loyal), you need the suffixes -'egh and -moH, e.g. yIyoH'eghmoH! Be brave!, literally Make yourself brave!, or pematlh'eghmoH! Be loyal!, literally Make yourselves loyal!

The suffix -moH is taught later on, so you will not see such commands with state verbs in this unit. This is just a grammar preview.