tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Mar 28 00:34:19 1994

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Re: KLBC: nuqDaq jIyInlI'

...
> 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'}.

     Interesting idea. I don't remember this being discussed. I probably
missed the discussion and apologise for that.
 
> {be'Hom loDHom ghap ghaH'a' 'e' wISovbe' wIneH}
> 
> "Is he/she a girl or boy? that we want to not know."

     Hmmm. I'm not sure I like this implementation. The problem is that the
{'a'} suffix forms a question that expects a yes/no answer. For that to work
for "whether", I would have thought this better stated as:

          be'Hom ghaH'a' pagh loDHom ghaH'a' 'e' wISovbe' wIneH

     The idea is that either the first option gets the yes or the second
option gets the yes. In your casting, it sounds more like the exclusive or
operation as a whole results in a yes/no condition. Of course, in English,
this is a classic joke because the meaning is grammatically ambiguous and
everybody interprets it one way unless they are being funny. Here, Klingon
has the facility to be less ambiguous, if we accept this convention.

     Am I off track?

> 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

     Yeah. At first glance, I was ready to argue that it should be {wISov
wIneHbe'}, but then I realized it doesn't really make much difference. In
general, if it doesn't make much difference, the original author should
choose as he will and everybody else ought to leave it be. That's my
nit-picker threshold.

charghwI'

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