tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jan 19 07:03:23 1995
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Re: KLBC - A first post. Does it make sense?
According to [email protected]:
>
> I'm trying to teach myself Klingon. I do this by writing little scenarios.
> At least, that's what I'm trying to do. That way, the words have meaning
> with respect to one another. Or I think they do. You tell me if I did it
> right, okay? And maybe, if you're good, I'll tell you how it ends.
loD QaQ vIDataH 'e' vIlay'. HIvoq. [Heh, heh...]
> cha'Hu' tachDaq jIvempu'.
You probably don't want {-pu'} here. Without it, this means,
"Two days ago, I woke up in a bar." With it, it means, "Two
days ago, I had awoken in a bar." See? Perfective is not the
same thing as past tense. The time stamp {cha'Hu'} makes it
past tense. The {-pu'} makes it "past perfect". There's a
difference.
> pay' paDaq paw cha' vaj.
That's {pa'Daq}, not {paDaq}.
> loDnI'chaj vIHoHta'.
Now, THIS is good use of {-ta'}, presuming that you killed him
on purpose. The killing didn't happen during the story line.
The event was complete BEFORE the story line, so {-pu'} or
{-ta'} are needed, and since you want to imply that you
intended to kill their brother and then did it, you picked the
most perfectly expressive suffix.
> SaleghDI' 'e' vIqaw.
This is not a complete sentence. "I remember that when I see
y'all..." If the {'e'} is supposed to refer to the previous
sentence, I guess this might work. It just feels a little
convoluted, and I suspect you picked the wrong prefix.
If that's what you meant, while I tend to prefer to place time
settings, like {vIleghDI'} before the object, for clarity, I
would say this as:
'e' vIqaw vIleghDI'. "When I saw them, I remembered that (I had
killed their brother)."
> Seng narghbej Dochvetlh.
Not quite. You have two main verbs. It looks like you are
trying to use {nargh} to affect {Seng} to result in the meaning
of {Senglaw'} so you can still add {-bej}, which you couldn't
do if you use {-law'}. Also, you are using {Dochvetlh} where
most of us would use {wanI'vetlh} or {ghu'vetlh}. We try to
reserve {Doch} for physical things, rather than events or
situations.
How about:
Sengqu'law' ghu'vetlh.
Anyway, good start. I'm on for the story. Let's hear part 2...
charghwI'
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