tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Sep 15 08:05:34 1994

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Re: 2 questions



Please note, that since there is no indication that Niall is a
beginner, this really is a message for ~mark or Krankor, the
Grammarians. As Beginners' Grammarian, I'm answering this
simply because they have not been answered yet, and I think I
can help out here. If I'm jumping in where the Grammarians
should be instead, please let me know.

According to Niall Hosking:

> I've two questions here:
> 
> Verb Prefixes:
> There is no prefix for 'I-US', in line with the pattern of the rest of
> the prefixes, but in that case, how would someone say something like 
> "I feed us" (ie. if someone asks "Who feeds you[pl.]?" )

I suspect the specific right answer here would be:

chaH vIje' 'ej jISop.

The language is simply unprepared to handle this. I was
disturbed by this early on and then, when I tried to come up
with the numerous, useful examples that I thought I could come
up with, I discovered that it was more difficult than I
thought. They all seemed forced. It's just not that frequent or
useful a case. There are cases where you might use {maHvaD jI-}
or {maHvaD vI-}, but there really are not so many cases where
you need to say "I-us".

> With:
> How do you say "with" in the sense "I hit him with a rock"?

This is one of the most repeated questions for the language.
The English preposition "with" means several different things
and each of those things needs to be handled a different way
for Klingon. Essentially, you recast it. There are several
options:

vIQIpmeH nagh vIlo'.
nagh vIlo'taHvIS vIQIp.
ghaH QIp nagh vIghoSmo'

Of these, I prefer the first, since it most clearly states the
purpose of the intentional use of the rock.

> -- 
> {qSeroHS vayn}

charghwI'



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