tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 04 11:55:27 1994

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Re: An Introduction



According to Robert Altenburg:
> 
> 
> Robert Altenburg jIH.
> tlhIngan Hol mu'ghom vIghajta 'ej
> tlhIngan Hol vIghojiI'.

majQa'. Of course, vIghojil' is a typo for vIghojlI', right?
Anyway, you have done well; you have honored yourself.

> tugh loDnI''a'wI' Craig vIghoHlaH.

Two points. First, the augmentative suffix is not intended to
mean simply "big". We have the adjectival verb {tIn} for that.
It implies greater significance. If, for example, you were in
some sort of royal family and one of your brothers was in line
to be king/emperor, etc. you might refer to him as
loDnI''a'wI', but for the most part you might instead just call
him {loDnI'wI' qan}, if he is simply older, or {loDnI'wI' tIn}
if he is notably larger. The classic example of use of an
augmentative is Duy'a', which means "ambassador", while Duy
means "agent or emmissary". The ambassador is not necessarily
larger than an emmissary.

The second point is simply your interpretation of ghoH. I would
personally tend to say {tugh maghoHlaH loDnI' qan jIH je}.
"Soon my old brother and I can argue." I would tend to think
that you can argue a point, but you can't argue a person. You
argue WITH a person, and "with" is one of those major
alligators you must wrestle in Klingon. English uses "with" to
mean several different things, each of which must be expressed
differently in Klingon. In this case, it is expressed by making
the two of you a group and giving you a plural subject.

> tuyaj'a'?

HIja'. Exceptionally good for a first try. You struck a nice
balance, expressing clearly what you know how to say, with a
very small amount reaching out into the unexplored space. Very
well done.

> Qapla'
> ********************
> now that I've reached the limit of my
> ability to speak tlhIngan-Hol I have a question:
> I've noticed that English-Hol punctuation is
> used on this list. Is there tlhIngan-Hol Punctuation?
>      - Rob.
> ********************

On this list, we are using the romanized alphabet, which is
already not the way that Klingons write. They use pIqaD, and we
explicitly do not know how pIqaD is used. All the Klingon
writing used in the Star Trek movies is intentionally "greeked"
so that it says nothing, attempting to make it consistently
appear as alien as possible. I personally think this is a dumb
idea, but Okuda won't budge, so there you have it.

So if we are not writing with pIqaD and we don't know how pIqaD
is used, we don't know about what sort of written punctuation
they might use. Meanwhile, since those on this list understand
punctuation and it is a tool to assist us in expressing ideas
through Klingon language, we use punctuation here.

Some will avoid punctuation and break sentences by lines so one
line is written for each sentence. Better yet, Okuda centers
each line of his greeked pIqaD, so some people center each
line. I did that early on, but now I tend to simply minimize my
use of punctuation, favoring instead to use words like {vaj} in
places where others would omit the word and use a comma instead.
Still, I now use periods, exclammation points and question
marks with an occasional comma.

There is no explicit standard here. You must find your own way.
Recognize that since we do not use pIqaD, the most important
part here is that you learn to SPEAK and THINK in tlhIngan Hol
in a way that other Klingon speakers can understand. Given
that, the significance of punctuation pales, and if it helps
get your idea across as you write, you probably should use it
in order to help those trying to understand what you write.

charghwI'



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