tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 06 09:22:40 1995
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Re: Gaps in known Klingon grammar?
On Fri, 6 Jan 1995, A.Appleyard wrote:
> As HolQeD 3.4 pp 3-6 (by Captain Krankor) says, revelations by Marc Okrand in
> HolQeD 3.3 & 3.4 show that (a) a verb can't be used unmodified as a noun
> except as authorized in the dictionary, (b) that (if `X` is a verb stem)
> `X-ghach` can't be used as the plain infinitive of `X` except to produce a
> new specific scientific or philisophical term (if I understood it correctly),
> and thus a long list of common English constructions can't now be translated
> into correct Klingon, even so much that on HolQeD 3.4 p5 Captain Krankor feels
> himself driven as far as to directly challenge Marc Okrand to remedy the
> matter. As Marc Okrand likely has other things to do than to carry the sole
> labour of updating Klingon, is there a chance of us on tlhIngan-Hol getting
> together to produce a `choHmey qechmey ghItlh` = "List of Ideas for
> Alterations" that we could forward to him? This would include such patches to
> fill gaps as:-
I haven't received HolQeD 3.4 yet, so I can't comment on Captain
Krankor's article, but putting {-ghach} on a bare verb stem
ususally results in creating an ambiguous word. E.g. if I were to say
*mughghach, you wouldn't really know if I was trying to say "translating"
or "a translation". To say "translating", it works better to say
{mughlI'DI' vay'} or {mughtaHghach} and there are several less ambiguous
ways to say "a translation", such as {Doch vImughta'bogh} or {mughta'ghach}.
(Anyway, how come it takes longer for HolQeD to reach Texas, than to
reach the UK?) {{:-(
> (1) A way to produce the simple infinitive of any verb.
I've never had a problem with this. Off the top of my head, I can't
thing of an infinitive I haven't been able to translate.
I like to read in order to relax. jIleSmeH jIlaD 'e' vIparHa'.
If you have a specific example of a hard-to-translate infinitive, let us
know; someone may have a good way to translate it.
> (2) In `X Z law' Y Z puS` (X & Y are nouns, Z is (verb used as) adjective), =
> "X is Z'er than Y", permission to omit or shorten the second occurence of a
> long phrase used as Z.
Sure it's wordy, but it works. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
> (3) Ability e.g. to use `tlhej` = "accompany" as an adverb "together" or a
> noun suffix "together with", by analogy of some other words that are also
> used as suffixes.
I would like to see more adverbs too.
> (E.g. once when I was writing a bit of Klingon, I needed a
> word for "around" and found none, so I had no remedy except to venture to bend
> the rules and use the noun for "orbit" as a noun suffix = "around".)
Perhaps if you wanted to say, "I walk around the outside of the building"
you could use something like: qach HurDaq gho rurbogh HeDaq vIyIt.
yoDtargh