tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jun 25 15:28:11 1993
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Klingon on road signs!
- From: (Mark E. Shoulson) <[email protected]>
- Subject: Klingon on road signs!
- Date: Fri, 25 Jun 93 16:58:51 -0400
- In-Reply-To: mark's message of Fri, 25 Jun 93 11:38:21 EST <[email protected]>
>From: mark <[email protected]>
>Date: Fri, 25 Jun 93 11:38:21 EST
>Content-Length: 566
>HoD qengvo':
>> Wouldn't
>> tlhIngan Hol 'e' majatlh naDev
>> work for "Klingon language spoken here"?
>Not very well. ma- means "we" subject and no object, or an
>understood object. The Type 5 verb suffix -lu' "indefinite
>subject" would fit this situation very well; in general, English
>passive forms often are well expressed with -lu'. Thus:
>naDev tlhIngan Hol jatlhlu'
Or, if you want to retain the active voice and the meaning, "we speak
Klingon here", you can use "naDev tlhIngan Hol wIjatlh". Words like
"naDev" and other adverbial phrases, or generally anything not the
subject, verb, or object, come at the beginning of a clause. You only use
the pronoun "'e'" to nominalize a whole clause as the object of another.
Here, the object is "tlhIngan Hol", a noun phrase, so it doesn't use "'e'".
And, as the other Mark said, "ma-" is for zero-object; "wI-" is for
third-person singular.
>- marqem
~mark