tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 11 13:34:22 1994
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Re: KLBC: {-ghach}
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>Date: Mon, 10 Oct 94 16:55:23 EDT
>> 'oghtaHghach SoS 'oH poQtaHghach'e'. Necessity is the mother of invention.
>Tell me honestly: Do you imagine a Klingon standing in front of
>you saying this, either in English or Klingon? "Necessity is
>the mother of invention." A Vulcan, yes. A Klingon, no. When I
>try to imagine it, I see two Klingons. One says it and the
>other hits him to bring him back to his senses.
The main thing to remember, and I think what's bugging charghwI' most of
all (since he's so adept at recasting sentences) is that the attempt really
just tries to cram the English *WORDS* into Klingon, rather than the
*MEANING*. As charghwI' has pointed out, sentences are like puzzles, where
the words fit together into a concept. To translate the sentence, you
don't try to find Klingon pieces that fit together the same way the KLingon
ones do, you cut the picture up differently. Necessity is the mother of
invention? "poQlu'mo' 'oghlu'." "One invents because one needs."
charghwI' won't like my "-lu'" on intransitives, but it's supported, and
especially in a proverb context like this it's very fitting. What's all
this talk about mothers anyway? And why use nouns when verbs work just as
well (and are simpler in the sentence)?
>> Quchqu'taHghach 'oH jIvtaHghach'e'. Ignorance is bliss.
>I can see a Klingon pointing to someone and commenting to a
>third person:
>jIvtaH ghaH 'ej Quchqu'.
>I cannot imagine a Klingon making the kind of global generality
>so attractive to Humans: Ignorance is bliss.
reH QuchtaH jIvwI'. That's also got that nice pithiness of a proverb. All
these proverbs rely on the copula in English, which English uses so
heavily. But Klingon doesn't use a copula as much; it doesn';t *need* to.
>> yu'pu'ghach a question
>I seriously doubt the accuracy of this. If the HolQeD article
>makes this acceptable, then I need to study this new language
>that Klingon has become. Did we get a new empiror recently? The
>use of the perfective has me stumped.
It probably works. It's "a thing which has been asked" (think Cherokee,
charghwI'; -ghach has many meaning, including "event" or "things which
is..." If "d-se-s-di" (or whatever) means "they have been written" and
means "letters" in Cherokee, the "yu'pu'ghach" for "it has been asked" can
work for "question.")
>> yu'qu'ta'ghach a severe interrogation
You're getting afield here, I think.
>> QIptaHghachHeymo' "-ghach" mojaq vIlo'Ha''a'? Am I misusing the suffix
>> {-ghach} due to my apparent ongoing stupidity?
>This seems especially unnecessary, since {-mo'} is also a
>verbal suffix. You could easily say:
>jIQIplaw'mo' "-ghach" mojaq vIlo'Ha''a'?
Yup. Even with the -taH if you thought it necessary.
>> Different subject: How do you say "about", "concerning", "relating to"
>> as in "This book is about targs"?
>targhmey buStaH paqvam.
or qeltaH. Thanks again for a brilliant recast, charghwI'.
>> yoDtargh
>charghwI'
~mark