tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 09 06:08:04 1994
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Re: pronouns and <-bogh>
- From: Mark J. Reed <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: pronouns and <-bogh>
- Date: Wed, 9 Nov 94 09:04:57 EST
- In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 9 Nov 1994 01:35:57 -0500. <[email protected]>
ghItlh Joseph W. Casey:
\ And now for some Klingon:
\
\ My Klingon line name is Cheghjihtah, it is as near as I could come to "I
\ always return". Any comments on how bad my Klingon is?
We don't comment on good or bad - we just offer constructive criticism.
Snce you're a beginner, the job of correcting your Klingon properly
falls to the Beginner's Grammarian, who I'm not - but since you said you'd
accept any input:
My first comment is that you should pay attention to the capitalization of
letters in the transcription. It's not arbitrary, but emphasizes the
differences between Klingon and English pronunciation. And while you could
conceivably do away with the capitalization of I, D, and S, the letters
Q and q refer to two different sounds, so you can't just pick lowercase or
uppercase based on English capitalization rules.
Onto the name and the motto:
"I always return" would be literally cast as "reH jIchegh" - "reH"
means "always", and "jIchegh" is "I return", from the verb "chegh" (return)
and the pronoun prefix "jI-" which means that the subject of the verb is
"I" and that there is no object.
"chegh jIHtaH" would be something like "I continue to be chegh" where "chegh"
is a noun that we haven't seen before, but which is probably related to
the verb "chegh".
\ Secondly, on this point, My line motto is Yin Qap'ej this is supposed to
\ say "Survive and Succeed". How badly did I mangle this one.
Very close. You made exactly the opposite of the ususal "and" error - when
joining nouns, the "je" does go after both nouns, but when joining verbs,
the "'ej" goes between them, just as English: "yIn 'ej Qap".
You might want to change the form of the verbs, though - what the above
literally means is "they live and succeed" (or "It lives and succeeds", etc.).
Although it's arguably Clipped Klingon for some other sense, if you have
something else in mind, you might want to say it explicitly:
"May you live and succeed" would be "bIyInjaj 'ej bIQapjaj" -
"We live and succeed" would be "mayIn 'ej maQap". Or you could fall back
on the nominal version from the book - "Survival and success!" (well,
actually, "Life and success!") would be "yIn Qapla' je".
-marqoS
--
Mark J. Reed
Email: [email protected] - Voice: +1 404 315 6296 x158 - Fax: +1 404 315 0293
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