tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Sep 10 15:10:05 1993

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Re: law' puqpu'

Before I could get a chance to respond to Matt Whiteacre's
questions, inspired by my pointing out some problems in his Hol,
charghwI' jumped in and answered.  Which is fine, in and of itself,
except that I take some exception to some of what he said.

>     Rats. Left TKD in the car. Oh well...

>> >>puqbe' wa'DIch wej puqpu'ma'.

>> The intension was to say "Our first three children are daughters".  How 
>> would I say this?

>     First comment is that Klingon generally tends to downplay gender, so
>this is a not-particularly-Klingon thing to say. I suspect a Klingon would be
>very unimpressed with the information. 

Come again?  I hardly think so.  True, the *language* itself is not
big on gender, compared to, say, English, but I think it's quite a
leap to say that Klingons are not interested in knowing people's
genders.  I'm sure a French speaker would say that *English*
isn't big on gender ("hey!  They only have one way to say 'the',
with no distinction for gender!") and it hardly follows that we
aren't interested in knowing the gender of someone's kids.  The fact
is that Klingons *do* have biological genders, they have mating
rituals that appear to be pretty heterosexual (in other words,
gender *does* seem to matter to them), and the language itself does
indeed recognize gender, albeit far less than English.  In addition
to the obvious words loD and be', consider Saw and nay.  In short,
the lack of gender-specific pronouns does not mean that Klingons
don't care about gender any more than the lack of a specific word
for the color orange means that they can't see it (as we have well
hashed out here before).


>My humble first attempt would include
>the pronoun as "to be". Unfortunately, the only 3rd person pronoun I can
>think of without TKD is 'oH, and I think that's for things instead of
>speakers, and one presumes that being female, they are speakers? Anyway, I'd
>put the pronoun between puqbe' and wa'DIch and I'd change puqbe' into
>puqbe'pu''e', indicating that they are plural and that the female aspect is
>the topic of the sentence.
 
This is not the info that Matt needs.  What he needs is to be
pointed at 6.3, page 67, so he can learn how to do all this.  Since
he obviously is wholly unaware of how to do "to be" in Klingon,
simply providing the answer doesn't support his learning.  Matt,
check out section 6.3, page 67. {{:-)


>> >>rupjajDaq qoSHeyDaj
>> 
>> This was to be "Our due date is on tax day".  Again, I could not figure out
>> how to put a verb in the sentence?

>     Is there no verb for "be born"? The first effort should always be to
>structure the sentence around some verb other than "to be".

Why?  Please cite the page number that supports this conclusion.
Contrary to some popular beliefs, "to be" is not a leper or a
stepchild, it is a perfectly valid part of tlhIngan Hol.  I don't
give a damn what Okrand said about his personal feelings toward it;
he put it into the language and it's there.  He also put in nuqneH
with some misgivings, but that doesn't mean we go around telling
people to avoid saying it.

> It would be easy
>to say "She apparently be born on tax day," so why structure it as a "to be"
>sentence?

Because that is the meaning that he wanted.

>    Similarly, revisiting the first sentence, as a Klingon, I would probably
>make it two sentences and make the whole message:
>
>     I have three children.
>     Them girls.
>     On tax day my fourth child be born, I expect it.

I am able to see that what you are doing here is translating back
into English ultra-literally, but this is extremely likely to
confuse anyone who doesn't have a really firm grasp on all the
grammatic structures of Klingon that you are referencing.  Even I
have to scratch my head for a minute looking at "Them girls."  In
any case, while it certainly is true that sometimes to do a
translation we have to significantly restructure the original
English, I do not feel that this is the case here.
The two sentences in question easily translate as:

puqbe' chaH wej puqpu'ma' wa'DIch'e'
rupjajDaq 'oH qoSHeyDaj'e'

I provide these translations principally for charghwI' and the rest
of the list following the discussion; I still encourage Matt to
check out 6.3 and understand for himself how to do these sentences.

While I admit that using "to be born" (bogh) might yield a somewhat
richer sentence, there is certainly nothing wrong with him trying to
do it as originally stated, and doesn't call for correction.  (And
in any case, the restructuring suggested does not properly capture
the original meaning.  A due date is not the date that the speaker
expects, it is the date that the speaker, the mother, the doctor(s),
basically everyone expects; as such I think this would be a good
candidate for net; thus "net pIH" instead of "'e' vIpIH").  Besides,
I think there is something to the way he did it; I really rather
like qoSHey.  I haven't found -Hey to be useful too frequently, so
it's nice to see it employed to good end.  {{:-)

                        --Krankor

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