tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 09 14:13:00 1994
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RE: KLBC: Does this sentence make sense?
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: KLBC: Does this sentence make sense?
- Date: Wed, 9 Nov 94 17:12:51 EST
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "METEU, THE MIGHTY LLAMA" at Nov 9, 94 4:34 pm
According to METEU, THE MIGHTY LLAMA:
>
> I understand, I think. "vem" is the act of waking up. "vemmoH" is to *cause*
> something to wake up. Right? So what is the difference between the word
> "vemmoH", and putting "-moH" on the word vem? Is there a difference? If there
> is'nt, then why is it in the TKD?
>
> Joe Schelin
Primarily, by placing vemmoH in TKD you will have one less
reason to misinterpret vem. There are several words in TKD that
are obviously verbs with suffixes that are there to help you
interpret specifically what the word means when it gets that
suffix. A good example is ja'chuq, which literally means "tell
each other", but it is used to mean "discuss, confer". They
really mean the same thing, but having the suffixed verb there
makes the shade of meaning more plain AND it makes it easier to
find when going from English to Klingon. If you wanted
"discuss", would YOU think to look up "tell" and add {-chuq}?
Okrand is not always consistent in these areas, resulting in
some confusion over verbs like vIH. It seems to be related to
"move" the same way that vem is related to "awaken", such that
if you move something, you should use vemmoH. Meanwhile,
because he did not include vemmoH and because the English
translation can be seen a couple different ways, experts
disagree on whether you use vIH or vIHmoH for the transitive
sense of "move".
I vote for vIHmoH. It is simple and unambiguous.
At any rate, it is generally agreed that verbs with suffixes in
TKD are really just verbs with suffixes. They are not verbs in
and of themselves so you can then use suffixes differently than
the usual. This is inconvenient when you want to say something
like, "We discuss our ideas." If discuss is {ja'chuq}, then the
rules for {-chuq} say you must use the prefix that indicates no
object, so we must use {maja'chuq}. Meanwhile, since there is
no object, we can't discuss IDEAS because that would be an
object of the verb discuss. See the problem?
It is one of those things Klingons wish to discuss with Okrand,
preferable en masse in a dark alley...
charghwI'