tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri May 20 05:41:58 1994

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Re: *maqbet* tidbit

> My question is whether or not it makes sense to make it
>possessive at all. "Our three" doesn't necessarily map well to
>"the three of us", or does it. Maybe I'm letting
>Englishcentricity affect my judgement here. I'd still favor
>"The three who are we..." or dump the whole issue of threeness
>and just refer to "we". Surely the witches know how many
>constitues their first person plural... It just seems like we
>are going to a lot of trouble to express a subthought that is
>insignificant. We are allowing what might be a casual toss in
>the English to convolute the Klingon enough to destroy the feel
>of an otherwise simple statement.

>charghwI'

<wej maHbogh>? mu'vetlh vIparHa'qu'

That's imesho a good way to express "three of us". However, it still leaves
some room for question. For one thing, it doesn't say whether there were more
of us: "three [out of four (or more)] of us" or "the three of us; no more,
just us three".

I've been thinking lately about pronominal qualification and things like
that, (and, yes, I do have a life). I've decided that "all of us, all of
you", etc., is best expressed by {ghommaj naQ}, {ghomraj naQ}, etc. As for
numeral qualification, I think it'd be best if the pronoun was just
forgotten:

Two of us will leave; the rest of you will stay.
{mej cha' - ratlh latlh}

Context should usually clarify in this case. Also recall the line from ST3,
{wa' yIHoH}. "Kill one *of them*..." The pronoun was determined by context,
and the Klingons don't seem to bother with them anyways.

But watch out, since this is no good for the case with the witches, in which
the idea of "we" is more important than how many there are. In that case, I
think the {maH} would definitely have to stay. It's all a matter of thinking,
which idea is more important: the number or the pronoun?

Also, while I'm at it, I'd like to critici--, I mean, discuss the neologism
used for "witch". It was {wIch be'}. Well, witches may be mythological to
most modern Westerners, but certainly not to the people of 17th century
England. SeQpIr would never have called them {wIch be'pu'}. The idea that
{wIch} and "witch" are, well, the way they are, is in and of itself cute, but
it's probably not really the way to go. It's almost like an inside joke to us
Klingonists. And it really wouldn't accomplish that much among the general
public (we *are* planning to publish the works of the KSRP, right?)


Guido#1, Leader of All Guidos

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