tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 04 13:08:37 1994

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Re: Fwd:re: Re: Good day to die.



According to [email protected]:
> 
> | that too often ask phrase "Now is a good day to die."
> 
> I toyed around with the phrase myself and wonder if anyone thinks the following
>  is valid:
> 
> HeghmeH QaQ 'oH DaHjaj

This doesn't really work. Let's ignore {HeghmeH} for now and
look at the rest of the sentence. As a noun, DaHjaj has no
reason to be there. Since it is not at the beginning of the
sentence, it is not expressing the time setting of the
sentence, so it must be a subject or an object. If {'oH} is
being used as a pronoun acting as a noun, then you appear to
have a noun-noun construction with {'oH} and {DaHjaj}, as in
"Its today" or "the today of it". That doesn't work.

If you are trying to use {'oH} as a verb for "to be", then the
sentence has too many main verbs and the word order doesn't
work. Used as a verb, the noun comes before the pronoun, as in
{tlhIngan jIH}. You never say {jIH tlhIngan}. The only time we
follow a pronoun used as the verb "to be" with a noun is when
we are using it to express equivalency, as in "tlhIngan ghaH
Holtej'e'}. Note that the second noun needs the {-'e'} suffix,
and this means "Holtej is a Klingon."

Even if you add {-'e'} to {DaHjaj}, the sentence doesn't work
because you are then using {QaQ} as a noun. That doesn't work.

Playing on your original idea, I might say:

maHeghmeH QaQ DaHjaj. "In order that we die, today is good."

This grammatically works, though people may argue about the
MEANING of the thing. Today is in the act of being good
explicity in order that we die? If today were bad, does that
mean that we would NOT die? For {meH} the sense is that the
subject of the main verb is performing the action of the main
verb in order to accomplish the goal implied by the verb
modified by {-meH}. mu'meywIj DalaDmeH bIH vIghItlh. "I write
my words in order that you read them." The whole reason that I
write them is to progress toward the goal of having you read
them. That sort of thing.

Ultimately, it turns out to be a very difficult thing to write
in Klingon, and as it has been pointed out, it is a line that
some writer cleverly stole from Little Big Man. More than
likely, a Klingon would have said something different enough
than this that we would not have so much trouble with it.

charghwI'



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