tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 11 09:04:16 1994

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Re: My first communication...



>Date: Fri, 11 Nov 1994 11:01:04 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: Johnny Wayne Jr Rittimann <johnny%[email protected]>

>On Wed, 9 Nov 1994, William H. Martin wrote:

>Also, the other day I was trying to figure how to say thanks or to 
>express gratitude.  No word for thank-you, no word for appreciate, no word
>for owe (as in "I owe you one"), no word for debt (for "I'm in your debt")...
>so how about it?  Do Klingons not express gratitude?

>This is about all I could come up with:

>   choQaHpu' vIparHa''e'    (I like that you helped me)

You mean "choQaHpu' 'e' vIparHa'", right?  Remember, in this case, you're
using the sentence "you help me" as the object of another sentence, so you
need the pronoun "'e'" (NOT to be confused with the suffix "-'e'", with
which it shares little aside from visual and aural similarity).  Another
option would be "choQaHpu' 'e' vItIv" or "choQaHmo' jIQuch" (I'm glad you
helped me).  Simpler, though, is just "qatlho'" (I thank you; look in the
addendum lexicon).

>And one other thing...

>How would you say that something _should_ be done?
>In the context of someone asking a superior "What should I do?" I suppose
>you could say  
>   nuq vIta' choneH      or
>   nuq vIta'niS

>But those kind of avoid the real meaning of should...

Both work well; I think "nuq vIta'nIS" is in fact pretty much the closest
you can get to "what should I do."  I don't really see much of a difference
between the two myself.  The putative "real meaning of should" very likely
exists nicely nesteled inside "-nIS"; don't get distracted by the fact that
"-nIS" only has "need" as a gloss.  Glosses aren't all there is.

>oh.. I lied...one more thing...someone told me that there is a Klingon
>Encyclopedia out which contains EVERY Klingon word, including a being verb.
>This book is apparently made for writers (who would be writing Star Trek 
>episodes and the like).  I've heard it costs about a $100USD.  Any 
>information on this?

Never heard of it.  COnsidering the quality (or lack thereof) of the
Klingon in episodes, I strongly doubt the existence of such a puppey.
Besides, it would be so easy to construct one, I can't see anyone charging
that much for it.  I mean, Klingon's word-construction rules are hardly so
complex that it would take more than an hour to program a computer to crank
out all possible forms (including silly ones).

~mark





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