tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 25 21:41:10 1994
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Re: sayings
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: sayings
- Date: Tue, 26 Jul 94 9:37:38 EDT
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "Margaret Kipp" at Jul 25, 94 8:22 pm
According to Margaret Kipp:
>
>
> I would like to use these sayings as lines in my sig file and would
> appreciate any grammatical improvements you may have.
Following are one person's opinions; not grammarian's expert
suggestions.
> If you do not wish a thing heard; do not say it.
>
> Doch Qoylu' DaneHchughbe' yIjatlhQo'
This is good. It might be a LITTLE clearer with {vaj}
separating that last two verbs, but that's stylistic.
> It is a good day to die.
>
> Hegh jaj QaQ 'oH
This one is a little thorny, involving one of those things it
would be good to get more information from Okrand about. In
this case, "it" really means "today", so using "it" is rather
idomatic to English and we are not sure it works in Klingon.
The place in which I apparently fail to understand proper
Klingon grammar is that this is the sort of thing *I* would be
tempted to translate as:
jIHeghmeH QaQ DaHjaj.
"For the purpose that I die, today is good."
Meanwhile, ~mark, who is far better at the language thinks that
every instance of {-meH} should fit the "in order to" phrase,
so my submission would be translated as "In order that I die,
today is good," which makes no sense at all.
If I interpret his style, he might take this to be:
qaStaHvIS DaHjaj ...
The problem then becomes that "it is good that I die," can't
really be easily constructed without using a "sentence as
subject" construction, which is not legal in Klingon.
I then might recast it as:
jIHeghchugh vaj QaQ DaHjaj.
"If I die, then today is good."
It may sound strange, but it is as close to a legal, simple
casting as I can get using uncontroversial Klingon
constructions. I personally might choose to go even farther
from the English to say, "I enjoy that I can accept death
today." I don't have my TKD with me, so:
DaHjaj Hegh vI*accept*laH 'e' vItIvqu'.
This may be considered a copout for abandoning the thorny
grammatical constructions that do not translate easily, but
hey, that's what I do best.
> Qapla'
'ej SoHvaD
> Margaret Kipp [email protected]
charghwI'