tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Mar 11 04:20:54 1994

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Re: How to speak of existence?



ghItlh ~mark:
>Hmm, maybe your problem was not the "-lu'" aspect (as someone commented
>once before, long ago), but the "tu'" verb; i.e. that in Klingon it *does*
>imply a location (as opposed to the "there" which I argued doesn't in
>English).  I can't offhand think of any canonical phrases using "tu'lu'"
>that don't imply a location as well.  Can anyone else?  I still think
>"tu'lu'" works for abstract things which aren't "located" anywhere.  Have
>we any evidence for "tu'" (not just "tu'lu'") on abstracts like this?

I don't believe so. I don't think {tu'lu'} looks right when refering
abstractly to things without a particular location.

{qech law' ja'chuqbogh lutu'lu'}
"There are many ideas under discussion." (Note: "under discussion" is an
English idiom; I only used it to make the English sound more natural)

The {tu'lu'} looks quite awkward in this construction. The ideas don't have
any location. They are not tangible entities. And anyways, this sentence
looks much more Klingonesque if it comes out as
{law' qech ja'chuqbogh} "The ideas they discuss are numerous."

Klingon and English are so different that recasting is almost always required
to some degree to make the final translation more 'natural'.

To me, {tu'lu'} only corresponds to the English "there is/are" if a location
is specified or implied. Otherwise, it must be expressed some other way, and
there may be several methods that work.


Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos



> "There are ways of telling whether she is a witch."
How do you know she is a witch?
Well, she turned me into a NEWT!
A newt?
......well.......well, I got better.



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