tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 03 09:12:23 1994

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Re: KLBC "Parrot" reply

On Mar 3,  8:35am, "Matthew Whiteacre" wrote:
> Subject: Re: KLBC "Parrot" reply
...
> Saj vIghajbe'
> be'nal wej puqbe' je vIghaj
> tlhIngan Hol lujatlhbe'
> "parrot"vaD tlhIngan Hol DaghojmoHghach DuH law'  <- Continue on next line
>                qorDu'vaD tlhIngan Hol vIghojmoHghach DuH puS
> targh [a dog] luneH puqbe'oypu'wI'

     Great post. Hilarious. Easily read and clear. I laughed a lot. Hmm. I
bet the dog will be much better at {gh} than {S}...

> Is there a better way to say that monster sentence I have?  Is what I have 
> even correct?  The intension was to compare trI'Qal's likelihood of 
> teaching his parrot to the likelihood of me teaching my family.

     I'd be hard pressed to come up with something better. It follows
Krankor's model (from his article in HolQeD for expanding on the comparative
construction for Klingon), and while I'm not wild about {-ghach} in most
settings, it is difficult to get around it for this one, which is probably
why {-ghach} was created in the first place. If there was a noun for "luck"
or "chance", you could make the nominalized verbs {-meH} purpose clauses
instead to say, "For teaching your parrot to speak Klingon, your luck is good
more than for teaching my family to speak Klingon, my luck is good less." But
the only way to get that is with another {-ghach}, so nothing is really
gained here. {-ghach}ing a prefixed verb is a bit strange, but that's exactly
what is called for here, using the Krankor model, which serves functions that
otherwise cannot be accomplished in Klingon. IMHO.

charghwI'

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