tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 25 23:01:05 1994
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sayings
- From: [email protected] (Mark E. Shoulson)
- Subject: sayings
- Date: Tue, 26 Jul 1994 10:57:30 -0400
- In-Reply-To: "William H. Martin"'s message of Tue, 26 Jul 94 9:37:38 EDT <[email protected]>
NOTE: I SENT THE LAST VERSION OF THIS LETTER BEFORE I WAS DONE WITH IT.
PLEASE DISREGARD THE LETTER THAT STARTS LIKE THIS ON EFROM ME AND PAY
ATTENTION TO THIS ONE ONLY.
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>Date: Tue, 26 Jul 94 9:37:38 EDT
>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.
There's also a grammar problem here: "-be'" cannot follow a type 9 suffix
("-chugh"). See p. 46. So it should be "DaneHbe'chugh".
>> 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.
Yes. I'd want to say "DaHjaj" explicitly.
>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.
Well, Okrand *does* say (p.64) that "-meH" is used when "...an action is
being done in order to accomplish something, or for the purpose of
accomplishing something"; i.e. that it indicates purpose (hence the term
"purpose clause", which he uses). Your usage is based solely on the fact
that he gives "for the purpose of" as another gloss of "-meH" (since that,
too, means "in order that"), and that "for the purpose of" in English
happens to have another, unrelated meaning of "regarding". Your reading is
based on the many meanings of the word "for" in English; and duplicating
English's idiosyncracies in Klingon isn't what we're after. So you're
right, I wouldn't accept this phrasing for what you want.
>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'.
"laj" is accept.
>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.
That you do, charghwI', and excellently. But in this case, I thought
actually that Margaret was really almost precisely on the mark for a good
casting. How about:
Hegh jaj QaQ 'oH DaHjaj'e'.
Taking "Hegh" as a noun (it's listed as one), this gives us "Today is a
good death-day". That's really quite good, even if it does use a copula.
>> Margaret Kipp [email protected]
>charghwI'
~mark