tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Mar 27 12:48:58 1994

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Re: KLBC: nuqDaq jIyInlI'

>Actually, you did fine... except for one small boo-boo.  You had the wrong 
>prefix in the second line, on <jIHaDlI'>.  Your "if it is a boy or a girl"
is 
>a bif of an iffy construct (if you pardon my puns. {{:) ).  I would have
just 
>said: loDHom be'Hom ghap 'oHchugh.  I don't think you need the 'e' in that 
>line, either... you don't have a complete sentence.  Yes, I think you 
>definitely don't want 'e'... they are subordinate clauses.  That means that 
><wISov> would also be <maSov>... make sense?

The phrase {loDHom be'Hom ghap 'oHchugh wISov wIneHbe'} looks a little on the
convoluted side. Something like "In the event that it is either a boy or a
girl we don't want to know."

First of all, why did you use ['oH]. In English we use "it" for babies when
we don't know the sex, but Klingons have a sexless {ghaH}.
But then there's the question of whether a baby can be classified as
"sentient". My vote is that a baby is {ghaH} to a Klingon. But you could
argue either way. (And, yes, I know the KLBC is not a place for debates).

2ndly, {-chugh} doesn't mean "if" as in "whether." For "We want to whether
it's a boy or girl," it would be best to use {-'a'}.

{be'Hom loDHom ghap ghaH'a' 'e' wISovbe' wIneH}

"Is he/she a girl or boy? that we want to not know."

I used {-be'} on the first verb after {'e'} because it looks more natural to
me. But that's just part of my style. You can copy it or not, whatever floats
your boat.


Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos

ghItlh 'o' (PS): This is all not intended for me to go over the current
Grammarian's head. These are just some suggestions that the Grammarian might
have missed. Is that OK?---

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