tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 09 10:53:16 1994
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Re: pronouns and <-bogh>
>Date: Tue, 8 Nov 1994 16:54:35 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>According to Silauren Half-Elven:
>>
>>
>> in my <Hol> class last night, we (the students) were given a quiz. one of
>> the questions/problems/whatever was to use a "to be" construction in a
>> sentence.
>>
>> being the masochist that i am, i decided to try my hand at a couple of
>> english cliche's. yeah, i know that they probably didn't translate well,
>> but that's okay.
>>
>> here's the two sentences in <tlhIngan Hol> that i turned in:
>>
>> 1) 'e' jIHbogh jIH
>Close. First of all, the special pronoun {'e'} is used to
>represent the previous sentence in a sentence-as-object
>construction. In this case, there is no such sentence. If you
>drop that first word, then maybe you are saying what you intend
>to say. Of course, most Klingons would wonder why you bothered
>to break a pleasant silence for such an uninspiring observation.
I don't know that "jIHbogh jIH" is such a great translation either. I
personally find myself confused when a "-bogh" clause doesn't have at least
one noun or pronoun explicitly stated, so the second "jIH" sounds to me
like it's the subject of the verb in the first, making it the whole
utterance a noun-phrase, "The me that I am." Not terribly helpful. A more
literal "jIH jIH" (I am me) (or maybe "jIH'egh"? Ick.) also seems only
marginally grammatical. It's not a simple phrase. "jIDa'egh" is probably
one of the best translations that spring to mind (I behave like myself); or
perhaps "jIDa'eghnIS" (I gotta be me) might be more appropriate, depending
on the setting (e.g., if you're explaining why you did something by saying
it's your nature).
As to "A friend in need is a friend indeed," I always understood that to
mean that a friend who remains a friend in time of need is a true friend
(yes, with "indeed" as one word). That is, a friend who's a friend when
*your* are in need is a real friend. Stretching the abilities of using a
-taHvIS phrase a little (using it to modify a noun), we can get something
like this:
bISottaHvIS jup ghaH jupna''e'.
Whatever.
~mark