tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Aug 19 06:44:19 1994

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Re: KLBC: choSov vIneh

The following is a rather impressive post for a 15 year old, so
as I point out errors, please do not consider that to be
discouragement at all, okay? It is my job as Beginner's
Grammarian (BG) to nudge you toward better use of the language.

According to A HORSE IS A HORSE:
> 
> 
> loDHom jIpong

When Okrand created this language, he left a nasty little trick
here for all beginners. Everybody wants to tell us his or her
name first. They look up "name" and see {pong} and try to use
it. Meanwhile, it is a very difficult verb to use well because
it requires two words in what linguists call "apposition". That
means two words referring to the same thing. If, in English, I
say, "People call me Will," then the word "me" and the word
"Will" both refer to the same person. Which one is the object
of the verb "call"? Well, they BOTH are. That's the problem. As
yet, Klingon doesn't give us a clearly right way to do this.

{pong} doesn't mean "is named" or "is called". It means "name"
or "call", so your sentence means "I call the boy," or "I name
the boy." The most common and least controversial solution that
I've seen here is to avoid {pong} as a verb and use it as a
noun. The sentence then becomes:

loDHom 'oH pongwIj'e'

"My name is Boy."

Even this looks strange to new people because of the way that
Klingon deals with the verb "to be". The general rule is that
if you want to say "X is Y" in Klingon, it will come out
looking like:

{Y <pronoun> X'e'}

In this case, your name is not capable of language, so the
pronoun is {'oH}. The Type 5 suffix {-'e'} always must follow
the second noun. Why? Well, it just does. Get used to it.

My own preferred solution is a little weirder, so don't take it
for gospel. I would say:

loDHom mupong tlhInganpu'.

"Klingons call me Boy." I cheat a little by implying one of the
two nouns in apposition through the verb prefix disagreeing in
person with the noun that is the object of {pong}. The verb
alone says "They call me," but the word {loDHom} is sitting
there in the position that says it is the object of the verb.
This implies that "me" and "Boy" are both the object of {pong}.

Nobody here has come out and told me this is wrong, but then
again, nobody has patted me on the back for doing a great job
of solving this thorny problem once and for all, either, so you
may very well choose to stick with {loDHom 'oH pongwIj'e'}.

> tlhIngan Hol jIqab

This is also not easy to say in Klingon. English has a kind of
idiom to say, "I am good at this," or "I am bad at that," and
Klingon does not have that kind of generic statement. Instead,
you must think more specifically about what you mean. {qab}
does not mean "be good at". It just means "be good".

You might say something like:

tlhIngan Hol vIjatlhDI' jIQagh.

"When I speak Klingon language, I make mistakes." This is an
example of finding a thing that Klingon does not do very well,
and then backing up and restating yourself more specifically in
a way that Klingon is strong. It is one of the things that I
like most about Klingon language. Often, the result is closer
to the root meaning than the English statement I started with.

In this case, when you say that you are bad at Klingon
language, what you REALLY MEAN is that when you speak it, you
make mistakes. Right? So now, not only can you speak Klingon a
little better, but you also have a little clearer insight into
what you MEAN, and what you say in ENGLISH may even change a
little, as you more clearly speak your meanings instead of just
saying the standard statements you've been taught to say in
English.

When you try to speak Klingon, after all, you are not BAD. You
are GOOD. You just make a few mistakes. There is a difference...

> jIQup 

"I am young." Perfect.

> tuQaH vIneh

"I want that you (plural) help me." Except for the minor typo
of not making that last H uppercase, this is perfect.

> *english Hol* jIjatlh vIneh:

Not altogether bad, but we can improve it.

> Ok, I wasn't sure about that last one, it was supposed to be something like
> I am going to speak in english, but I didn't know how to say it.

Okay, think about the suffix {-choH}. It indicates a change.
What you really want to say here is that you are about to
change to speak English. Just for convention sake, we usually
refer to English (when speaking Klingon) as {DIvI' Hol), or
"Federation Standard". That's what they call it in the world of
Trek, and that is, after all where all this came from, right?

So, you would like to indicate that right now, you are about to
begin the change to speaking English. You might want to try
this out for yourself before looking below to see how I do it.

. 
. 
. 
. 
. 
. 
. 
. 
We set the time with a nice {DaH}, okay?

DaH DIvI' Hol vIjatlhchoH:

"Now, I begin to speak Federation Standard."

At least once, I'll explain that {tlhIngan Hol} REALLY means "a
Klingon's language". The word {tlhIngan} is a noun, not an
adjective, but in English, this same concept is expressed by
using "Klingon" as an adjective. You should know that it
literally means "a Klingon's language" or "language of the
Klingons", but you will always translate it as "the Klingon
language". Similarly, {DIvI' Hol} means "The Federation's
language", but it is translated as "Federation Standard".

> Hey, that's
> what this demi-list is for anyways isn't it?

You got THAT one right.

> Truth be told I am probably the ranking youngest on this list, even younger
> then Guido, at age 15.  Could somebody send me a list of www sites for klingon
> stuff? Thanks.
> loDHom
    
You may be younger than me, but my presence here is evidence
that I'm just as much of a kid as YOU are, so WATCH it. Okay?

charghwI' -- At 39, he is STILL a Boy Wonder!

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