tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Nov 20 19:31:24 1994
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Lesson of the week
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Lesson of the week
- Date: Sun, 20 Nov 94 22:31:14 EST
In response to Paul's idea, and my guilt for not having really
done much proactive as Beginner's Grammarian in a long time,
here's a guideline for newbies:
A vague roadmap:
Begin by writing elemental sentences in English which consist
of just a pronoun for a subject, a verb and if the verb is
transitive, a pronoun for an object. Sentences like this are
written as one word in Klingon. "I see you." "He walks." "They
listen." qalegh. yIt. 'Ij.
If you want to distinguish the number in those last two
examples, use the explicit pronouns: yIt ghaH. 'Ij chaH.
You won't always find specific Klingon verbs for the verbs you
want in English. Instead, you need to look for synonyms
sometimes, or even antonyms, figuring that you can add a suffix
to change the meaning of the verb.
Still, the act of looking up the verbs will help you build a
vocabulary, especially as you settle on the verbs you will need
to repeat more often. Ultimately, you will only remember the
words that you use repeatedly, so the best way to memorize
vocabulary is to use words. As you look at other people's
writing on this list, you will discover words that others have
found to function in place of verbs you may have searched for
without success. This is the kind of support that a Klingon
speaking community can provide that your own discipline might
fail to offer you.
Next, look at each suffix for the verbs in TKD. Think about
whether a particular suffix is interesting to you. If it is,
then try to use it. The suffixes substantially modify the
meaning of the verbs to which they are attached. Learning a
collection of useful verbs and useful suffixes will both launch
you into beginning Klingon language skills AND you will be
memorizing stuff that will be useful forever as a Klingon
speaker. Wait a while before dealing with Type 9 suffixes,
since they make the verbs dependent verbs, and so make the
sentences you write somewhat more complex. There is much to
learn about simpler sentences when you are starting out.
Become intentionally familiar with all the verb prefixes. Few
things will help you translate from Klingon to English better
than to be able to recognize a verb prefix when you see one. It
makes looking things up in TKD massively easier. You won't have
nearly as many false lookups.
So, practice both writing and recognizing verb prefixes and
useful verbs, expand into suffixes, and only then should you
bother spending a lot of time on nouns.
Now, in your compositions, remember that the object comes
first, then the verb and then the subject. Explore the noun
suffixes one by one, figuring out which ones may be most useful
to you. Don't worry about skipping some. Go for that which is
most attractive to you initially, in order to hold your
interest while you build the basic toolset. Whenever you feel a
little bored with what you have, you can then go back and work
on more.
Now, look at the chuvmey. Again, take on bite sized pieces. All
of this applies to that which you WRITE, since the best way to
progress is to write to this list and get feedback on what you
show you understand and get correction on those things you have
confused.
Once you have all these pieces and all the affixes down for
simple sentences, explore the Type 9 verb suffixes and how they
bond the dependent verb to the main verb. Now, you are ready to
take on Sentence As Object constructions and even the truely
weird constructions, like comparatives.
By then you will have probably begun your own style and you
will be well on your way to conversational skills at the
language.
More to come...
charghwI'