tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 31 21:40:04 1994

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'ovpu'ghach, and some commentary.

>From: [email protected] (Richard Kennaway)
>Date: Mon, 31 Jan 94 10:44:40 GMT

>Another snippet of Zen.  These Zen stories might be rather high-falutin'
>for the average Klingon, but I suspect the same was true of the average
>Japanese samurai.

>'ov cha' SuvwI' Dun'
>'etlhmo' SuvwI' wa'DIch qIp SuvwI' cha'DIch

If you mean "with a sword", try "'etlh lo'taHvIS".  As it stands, it sounds
like he hit him because of a sword somehow (maybe because he saw one and it
made him mad or something).

>QuchDajDaq ghor'eghqu' 'etlh 'ej rIQta'be'

"ghor'eghqu'"?  The sword broke itself?  Understandable, but might not
simply "'etlh ghor QuchDaj" be more obvious?  It makes more sense to how a
Klingon speaker might phrase it.


I've been doing some re-writing, re-editing my Jonah again, and I think my
Klingon has made a big improvement.  I'm finally starting to move away from
my overly literal style, and working more toward how a user of the language
would cast the concepts (please don't stop reading, charghwI', even tho
this is slightly about KBTP.  It's only as an example).  Frankly, I feel my
style is starting to get closer to charghwI''s, whom I consider a very good
model in casting sentences Klingonically rather than Englishly.  I'm
dropping most or all "-ghach"s, even those that could be gotten around with
"-taHghach", by recasting in a cleaner way.  For instance, the phrase about
"for their wickedness has risen up before me" used to be "jIHDaq SIchpu'mo'
?mighghachchaj".  Now, I could have made the last word "mIghtaHghachchaj",
and it actually would have been meaningful, since the continuous aspect
makes sense in this context (I normally feel that that gratuitous "-taH" is
a blatant Esperantism: the -ado suffix on verbs).  But I thought about it:
would that be a natural way to cast the sentence?  No!  I've changed it to
"mIghtaH chaH 'e' vItu'pu'mo' jIH".  MUCH nicer.  Similarly, I'm starting
to break up those murderous relative clauses.  "I serve God, the god of the
heavens, who created the sea and the land" used to be "joH'a', yav bIQ'a'
je chenmoHta'bogh joH chal'e' vItoy'".  Eww.  Now it's "joH'a' vItoy'.
bIQ'a' puH je chenmoHta'bogh joH chal'e' ghaH".  OK, the relative clause is
still bad, and I may do even more to it, but there are others that will
certainly be broken down more.

I'm also starting to use "ghaj" less.  We overuse that word, since it's so
heavily loaded in English.  I corrected David Barron(?) recently, when he
said "poH yap vIghajbe'"; "yapbe' poHwIj" is much neater, since how can you
"possess" time?  I'm still looking for a verb for "to feel an emotion",
since "pung ghaj" for "to have mercy" is really awful, but I think I can
look less hard.  For one thing, for some nouns of emotion, we have fine
verbs like "SIQ" or "bech", which could work fine, even for some emotions
that aren't all that unpleasant.  Also, we can say something more
meaningful: "to have mercy on someone" most of the time means "to act out
of mercy toward someone", thus putting the emphasis on the actual *action*
(incidentally a Klingonic perspective).  So "pungmo' ta'" works well too,
with proper phrasing around it.  Similarly "Salvation is God's", which had
been "toDghach ghaj joH'a'" is going to be "toDbej joH'a'".  Far better.

Try to think about these points.  "ghaj" and "-ghach" are two constructs
which I believe should set off warning bells in your head whenever you use
them: do I really need to use them, or is there a better way?

~mark

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