tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jan 19 08:27:19 1995

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Re: easy sentences

>Date: Thu, 19 Jan 1995 04:11:26 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: Marc Ruehlaender <[email protected]>

>> > > > > > 8. It was a pity the weather was so bad.
>> > > > > >    QaHHa'laHpu' SuSmey. vaj moghnISlu'.
>> 
>> Note that your English contains no sense of perfective. It DOES
>> contain past tense, but Klingon doesn't deal with tense except
>> by context or time stamp, which you could think of as a
>> temporal locative. Anyway, {-choH} indicates this change of
>> state that you sound like you are seeking. Perhaps you like:
>> 
>> matlhetlhqa'laHpa' nuQaHHa'choH SuS.
>> 
>> Before we could progress again, the wind changed to hinder us.
>> 
>I'm not sure that I made myself clear (sigh-)
>I try to explain, what I wanted the suffixes to express:
>-Ha'		a change from QaHlaH to QaHlaHbe'
>-laH		well, "help" -> "helpful"
>-pu'		the change indicated by -Ha'
>	   is completed. (I know the difference
>	   between tense and aspect - though
>	   I'm not to say I mastered it :-)

I think I have to chime in here briefly.  I see a point of confusion.  You
seem to think, for some reason, that -Ha' implies a *change* of status.
I'm not positive where you get that idea, but it's good that you notice
it's needed, since Klingon *DOES* express changes of status
explicitly... but not with -Ha'.  That's what -choH is for.  Read it again.
So QaHchoHlaHbe' is probably the closest to what you want... yes, I know it
doesn't seem obvious from the ordering of teh suffixes, but there's no
alternative.  -choH has to precede -laH, and -be' only makes sense after
-laH.

>(I don't know what you mean by "time stamp")

>> In HolQeD vol 2, number 4, Okrand stated that {muD} could be
>> used to describe the weather.
>> 
>like in DaHjaj QaQ muD?

I thought it was "muD Dotlh."

~mark

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