tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jan 28 13:31:21 1995
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Re: Another try at some Klingon...
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Another try at some Klingon...
- Date: Sat, 28 Jan 95 16:31:18 EST
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "achghuQ the Klingon Warrior" at Jan 28, 95 2:39 pm
According to achghuQ the Klingon Warrior:
>
> According to charghwI':
> >According to achghuQ the Klingon Warrior:
...
> >> bIng juHDaq QongtaHvIS puvlaHbogh Ha'DIbaH mach.
>
> >... Anyway, I think this is
> >perfect for what you want. The rest of your sentence, however
> >has no main verb. If you drop the {-vIS}, I think you'll have
> >what you want.
>
> Could you explain why the {-vIS} makes that verb not the main verb?
> What I meant to say was "While down below (their home) they were sleeping".
> Should I have used an adverbial?
"While the small animal which can fly sleeps in the house
below." It's not a sentence. There is no main verb. {-taHvIS}
turns a verb into a time stamp for another verb. That other
verb is the main verb. You don't have a main verb. You have set
a time for an event to happen, but you didn't provide an event.
Remove {-vIS} and you get:
"The little animal which can fly is sleeping in the house
below." That's a complete sentence. {Qong} is then the main
verb. See?
If you wanted this to all be a clause to be appended to the
previous sentence about the big bird flying above, then you
needed to not put a period between them.
> >> ngab retlh yavDaq 'engbogh.
>
> >The last pair of syllables is not a word. A locative, like
> >yavDaq, belongs in FRONT of it's verb. 'eng is not a verb,
> >despite the suffix. The only visable verb is ngab and I don't
> >see how any of this is supposed to tie together.
>
> How does this work?
>
> yavDaq retlh 'oHbogh 'eng'e' 'e' ngab
You are flailing. Pull yourself together here. Concentrate.
What you have says something like:
"On the ground, it dissappears [somehow used transitively] that
the cloud which is the area beside."
I'm not making that up. THINK. Your errors, in sequence:
If you mean, "In the area next to the ground", then which word
should get the {-Daq}? What location are we talking about? The
ground's location, or the area next to the ground's location?
You need {yav retlhDaq}. Generally speaking, in a noun-noun
construction used as a locative, the last word always will get
the {-Daq}. It fundamentally has to. If the first word gets
{-Daq}, then it doesn't look like a noun-noun construction at
all. The first noun looks like a locative and the second noun
looks like the object of the verb.
In Klingon, word order is the structure which makes all things
clear. If you want to master Klingon, the first thing you need
to work on is getting the words in the right order. That is why
I keep suggesting to people that they begin with simple
sentences and then build to more complicated constructions
LATER, because when they ignore that advice, they consistently
get very disorganized with their word order and what they write
comes out gibberish. It makes the difference between music and
noise. I love music. And the noise kinda gets to me after a
while...
You do not want to use the pronoun {'e'} here at all. If you
did, you would need two complete sentences. Adding {-bogh} to a
verb makes it dependent, so it can't be a main verb, so there's
no complete sentence to refer back to with your {'e'}. You just
want a simple sentence. At the area next to the ground, the
cloud disappears. You have a location and an event. There's no
need for either a pronoun used as the verb "to be" nor for a
"sentence as object" construction. You are taking a simple
thought and putting it through complex grammatical
constructions, and it is not working.
[Calm down, charghwI'. You are taking this too seriously.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Think about
pleasant things, like strangling a Denebian Slime Devil with
your bare hands. Ahhhhh. Yes. Much better.]
yav retlhDaq ngab 'eng.
Oh. I get it. You wanted fog and have been struggling to build
it out of "cloud". Well, if you place a cloud at the area next
to the ground, that's probably enough. Since we do not know
Klingon to have a separate word for fog, they may very well not
differentiate as we do between a cloud above us and a cloud
among us. If you feel a need to refer to fog as "cloud at
ground level", then:
ngab yav retlhDaq 'oHtaHbogh 'eng'e'.
I don't like that nearly as much. It seems overly fixated on
location. I'd prefer something that does something, like:
ngab yavDaq HuStaHbogh 'eng.
"The cloud which hangs at the ground dissappeared." Any time I
can avoid unnecessarily using a pronoun as a verb, I do. This
is especially good for stories as good as this one. Let me see
things HAPPEN, not just BE.
Forgive me. I'm talking too much. That's what happens at my
60th Email message at one sitting...
...
> Is this correct? Does that make -pu' and -ta' a 'were verb-ing'
> structure?
Not really. They can take either past, present or future tense,
resulting in:
has verbed (present)
had verbed (past)
will have verbed (future)
I'd say "were verbing" is past tense {-taH} or {-lI'},
depending on there being or not a clear goal or stopping point.
>
> achghuQ
charghwI'
--
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