This unit teaches you how to describe some things that happened in the past or will happen in the future with words such as the day before yesterday or three months from now. It also introduces the days of the week.

The Klingon day

The basic Klingon word for a day is jaj. In it's strictest use, this refers to one complete planetary rotation from one dawn to the next dawn. The Klingon day can be divided into pem daytime followed by ram night.

Today

You may notice that the word jaj appears in the timestamp DaHjaj today. It is also used in the word jajvam this day. jajvam seems never to be used as a timestamp, but is frequently used to refer to today in sentences as the subject, object, or topic of the sentence. For instance in the famous Klingon aphorism, Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam! Today is a good day to die!

DaHjaj can also be used as the subject, object, or topic of a sentence, but it is rare to see it that way. jajvam is mostly used for that purpose and DaHjaj is usually just used as a timestamp.

Time ago and time from now

Klingon expresses notions such as x days ago or y days from now with special syllables combined with a preceding number and do not use the word jaj.

Similar syllables are used for months and years.

You will see the number and the time syllable written together as if the syllable was a number suffix, but you also may sometimes see them written as two words with a space between.

Time ago

-Hu' days ago (wa'Hu' yesterday, cha'Hu' the day before yesterday, wejHu' three days ago, loSHu' four days ago, …)
-wen months ago
-ben years ago

Time from now

-leS days from now (wa'leS tomorrow, cha'leS the day after tomorrow, wejleS three days from now, loSleS four days from now, …)
-waQ months from now
-nem years from now

People who like mnemonics may find it useful to remember waQ and wen as months from now, months ago because the moon "waxes" and "wanes.")

How old are you?

The suffix -ben years ago is also used when inquiring about someone's age.

When asking someone how old they are, Klingons ask how many years ago they were born: ben 'ar bIboghpu'?

And the answer might be wa'maH chorghben jIboghpu' I was born eighteen years ago = I am eighteen years old.

It is standard to use the -pu' syllable even though the English does not include has/had/will have and so we allow answers that do not include them for these phrases.

Other time periods

For other time periods that have no specific suffixes, such as minutes from now or weeks ago, you can use ret time period ago and pIq time period from now.

For example, wa' Hogh ret is one week ago and wa'maH tup pIq is ten minutes from now (literally, one week's time-period-ago and ten minutes' time-period-from-now).

Days of the week

The days of the week in the Gregorian calendar commonly used on Earth are as follows:

DaSjaj Monday
povjaj Tuesday
ghItlhjaj Wednesday
loghjaj Thursday
buqjaj Friday
ghInjaj; lojmItjaj Saturday
jaj wa' Sunday

There are two words for Saturday. There's no difference in meaning between them. The longer one lojmItjaj tends to be used on formal occasions, but otherwise, both are used about equally frequently.

The days DaSjaj through ghInjaj/lojmItjaj are Klingon weekday names and are used in the Klingons' six-day week.

When Klingons encounter calendars with more than six weekdays, they simply number the remaining days and call them Day One, Day Two, Day Three etc.

Thus our Sunday gets called jaj wa', literally, Day One.