tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Apr 28 01:11:03 1994

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Re: birdbrains



According to Marshall Levin:
> -- 
> "bItlhapchugh yabDu' law' yejquv 'ej Dalan nachDaq ghew reH puv ghew HeD."
>                                                --NAACP chairman Benjamin Hooks
> ("If you took the brains of the majority of the Supreme Court and put them into
> the head of a bird, the bird would fly backward for ever and ever and ever.")

	Assuming that ghew=bird, this sentence still needs a lot of
work:

ghew nachDaq yejquv yabDu' law' Dalanchugh vaj reH HeDtaH ghewvam
"If you put the many brains of the High Council in a bug's
head, then this bug always retreats."

"Take" and "put" are probably being used idiomatically in the
original and "take" is unnecessary. The locative is more
commonly seen at the beginning of the sentence. The noun-noun
constructions indicating possession are reversed consistently
in the original. The subject of the second sentence of the
original needs to FOLLOW that verb.

	Even with these corrections, "retreat" is not the same
thing as "fly backwards", so what is intended to convey
stupidity is translated into cowardice. If you spend more time
on it, you might come up with a better casting of this
sentence, but the original is so grammatically flawed as to be
somewhat embarrassing. I'm not trying to flame you. I'm trying
to save you from keeping this signature for years and years and
then having you learn better Klingon and realize that your
sentence really means a badly stated:

"Hey, brains! If you take."  "The High Council is many and you,
bug of at the head, put it." "The bug always flies." "He
retreats."

	That's a bunch of meaningless sentences and fragments
glommed together. You don't really want that in your signature.
Maybe you should just keep the English part...

charghwI'



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