tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Apr 13 13:09:49 1994
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Re: Warped
marqem responded to my joke about ta'ta' with:
> Unfortunately, it doesn't work grammatically. ta' is 'to
> accomplish', not 'to be accomplished'; for that you must use
> rIn. ta'ta' could only mean 'he/she/it/they has/have
> accomplished what h/she/it set out to accomplish'. Close,
> but no cigar.
Sigh. Literalists. So, I botched the English a bit. There's still the
basic meaning (perhaps not literal, but certainly metaphorical, and a really
easy metaphor too) right there.
While rIn is more fitting and in keeping with the brusque Klingon nature (as
is pItlh, which ~mark pointed out), the point was that the human didn't
understand the even more appropriate leaving without comment. So, just like
an English speaker speaks more slowly (and louder) when trying to explain to
a foreigner (and I still don't know why we do that!), the Klingon in the
example might simply spell things out overtly (which makes the use of rIn
less likely).
Or maybe, you're missing the real point here. It's a JOKE!!!!
;)
Lawrence
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:: Dr Lawrence M Schoen, Director ::
:: The Klingon Language Institute ::
:: POB 634, Flourtown, PA 19031 USA ::
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