tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 08 10:58:18 1994
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Adams Family Motto:
>From: [email protected]
>Date: Fri, 04 Feb 94 02:09:03 EST
>ghItlh nIchyon:
>> nucharghqangwI' wISopchu'mo', maQuch.
>What on Kronos is that prefix doing there? A prefix with {-wI'}???
>I've asked about that before, I had wondered if I might say {nughojmoHwI'}
>rather than {ghojmoHwI'ma'} if we don't actually own the teacher. I dunno. It
>might take some getting used to, but using {-wI'} in this way seems another
>useful feature of Klingon that really hasn't been used to the full potential
>yet, being equivalent to {-bogh}, but not requiring a head noun of anysort.
It's been mentioned here before. I don't know how widely-accepted it is at
this point. So far, there has been less use of/call for it than I might
have expected.
>So, in that line of thinking, here is "He who laughs, lasts," in my original
>translation and in this new alternative:
>{taH Haghbogh ghaH}
>{taH HaghwI'}
>Hmmm, I still like the former. It sounds more rhythmic. But for all practical
>purposes, they're both perfectly grammatical. Altho, {-wI'} used with a
>prefix just might not cut it. What thinks our grammarian?
Well, I like your second alternative, and it really isn't anything new
(frankly, your first alternative looks awfully shaky to me. "That which
X's" in Klingon is most naturally rendered as "XwI'". Maybe if you had a
real noun instead of a pronoun as the head I'd like it better; I somehow
have trouble with explicit pronouns being any more important than implicit
ones). Maybe "SIQtaH HaghwI'" is better still.
I'm somewhat inclined to permit "-wI'" on prefixed verbs, but I'm not going
to rule authoritatively at this point. There are some interesting things
involved... "yaS ghojmoHwI'" is either a noun-noun "officer's teacher", or
maybe it's a nominalization of "yaS ghojmoH"; "he/she/it teaches the
officer". This gets weirder if you consider plurals; you could get
"ghojmoHwI'[pu']", or even "lughojmoHwI'[pu']". And I don't want to
*think* about what happens if the prefix isn't 3rd-person subject! That
probably wouldn't be legal outside of poetry.
>Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos
~mark