tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Sep 18 10:06:44 1994
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Re: 2 questions
According to Terry Donnelly:
>
>
> Greetings! This is my first posting to the list, so please be
> kind. I've been studying Klingon for about a year and a half,
> but I'm still working out the kinks.
Welcome! As Beginner's Grammarian, I heavily encourage you to
continue to post and to bring up specific concerns you may have
as a beginner. If you do so, however, it is even better if you
begin your topic header with "KLBC:". That will alert me that
you are a beginner and you are seeking a response as such. If
you haven't already read me say this before, that's for Klingon
Language Beginner's Conversation/Conference/Club.
...
> >>How do you say "with" in the sense "I hit him with a rock"?
...
> How about using the suffix {-mo'}, as in {naghmo' vIqIpta'}?
Unfortunately, this could as easily mean that because of a rock
that he had stolen from me, I hit him with my hand. All we say
with {-mo'} is that the noun was the cause of the action, not
necessarily the instrument of it.
> This suffix has always seemed to me to have the sense of a
> classical "instrumental". I admit that I can only find one
> canonical example of this suffix, in TKD {SuSmo' joqtaH}, but I
> can't find *any* canonical examples of the other alternatives.
> I've always believed that, since Okrand created so few
> prepositional forms, he intended them to have broader, rather
> than narrower, applications (eg. the uses of {-Daq}); this would
> also be in line with Klingon being a more concise language than
> English.
Unfortunately, while this makes it easier to take an English
sentence and translate it into Klingon, it makes it
substantially more difficult to figure out what the resulting
Klingon sentence means. If a wider range of English meaning can
be funnelled into a more vague Klingon language, then the
reverse translation becomes too vague to mean very much.
My personal choice in taking on the challenge of the Klingon
language is less to make it easy to take any English sentence
and make it Klingon than to create Klingon sentences that
anyone who understands Klingon can understand well. This
involves a lot of recasting. We've done this fairly well with
the instrumental a couple different ways. My favorite is still
to use {-meH}, since it clearly shows the thought:
"Proechel" vIqIpmeH nagh vIlo'ta'.
"In order that I hit Proechel, I successfully used a rock on
purpose." It is concise and rather unambiguously explains what
I was doing and what I was using to do it. I frankly don't
quite understand why people continue to attempt other ways to
say this. It seems to say it so well for me. The closest
alternative that I've seen is:
nagh vIlo'taHvIS "Proechel" vIqIpta'.
"While I used a rock, I successfully hit Proechel on purpose."
I find this a little weaker, since it really only expresses
simultenaity and not a functional link. "While I used a rock to
make funny sounds, hitting it against my forehead, I
successfully hit Proechel on purpose, with my hand." "While I
used a rock to balance myself on the tightrope, I successfully
hit Proechel on purpose, with my peashooter."
> In that same vein, how about using the suffix {-vo'} to mean
> "according to" (a classical "ablative" usage), as in
> beqvo' (or beq De'vo') yaS qIpta' HoD.
> "According to the (information of the) crewman, the captain struck the
> officer."
This is so simply said as {yaS qIpta' HoD jatlh beq} that I
don't think we need to extend {-vo'} from its locative roots in
order to cover this example. For me, {beqvo' yaS qIpta' HoD} is
a strange way to say that the captain leapt from the crewman
and struck the officer, or maybe he stood behind the crewman
and hit the officer with a rock in order to get the crewman in
trouble? {De'} seems to be an odd word to apply {-vo'} to,
since it is a somewhat abstract concept, usually not involving
its own physical location. In English, we have many meanings
for the word "from" and I think {-vo'} is far more limited in
its use.
I don't think that Klingon has more limited prepositions so
that we can extend the meanings of the words associated with
prepositional function. I think Okrand was trying to create an
alien linguistic mindset. He was intentionally building a
language that would make you back up and rethink your thought
before casting it into Klingon. I think that is one of the more
fascinating aspects of the language.
True, some of us study it because we think ridged foreheads are
cool, so anything someone with a ridged forehead must be
interesting, but for others, it is the linguistic role-playing
that is required in order to comprehend Klingon. You need to
approach concepts from a different angle.
The language does have its weak points. This list and the
quarterly publication HolQeD are actively trying to work ways
around these vague points in the grammar and vocabulary, either
by consensually agreed convention here, or preferably by
further explanation from Okrand himself.
> toH, chay' SuQub?
Does this help?
> --Terry
>
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Very nice sig. I'm impressed with the quality of the
translation.