tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed May 10 19:54:16 1995
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Re: what (question)
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: what (question)
- Date: Wed, 10 May 95 22:54:13 EDT
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "Jim Boniface" at May 10, 95 11:18 am
According to Jim Boniface:
>
> Is there a way in klingon to use the word "what" not so much as a
> question? I'm asking because for some reason I started to translate the
> song "mother" by Danzig, and in the song it says
As it has been pointed out, no, there is no single way to use
"what" not as a question. You do need to recast. Here, you have
not expressed the way YOU want this recast. Let's consider the
options.
> Tell your childer not to hear my words
This much is not very controversial. Simple, complete sentence:
mu'meyDaj yIQoyQo' puqpu'lIjvaD yIra'.
Notice that Klingon has no indirect quotation, so you have to
say "his words", not "my words". "For your children, tell them,
'Don't listen to his words.'"
Here, the word order helps the sentence. Having the indirect
object follow the quotation makes it clear that the children
are the object of the telling and not part of the quotation,
since nouns with {-vaD} never come at the END of a sentence.
> what they mean
> what they say
I think these are redundent. Meanwhile, the form of a song is
always difficult, as is any poetry. I do not claim to be a poet
in this langauge. I'd lump all these together into
{qechmeyDaj}. After all, "what his words mean" is "his ideas".
To express this as a sentence, as if it were a continuation of
the quotation:
qechmeyDaj yIbuSHa' yIra'.
Here, {buSHa'} means "ignore".
> but I couldn't figure out how to translate the "what they mean" or "what
> they say"
I understand the frustration expressed toward you about yet
another question which on the surface feels like, "give me a
word for pitchfork" (i.e., give me the formula for saying
something without having to think about it) by another poster,
and I understand your frustration with his post.
Meanwhile, we must remember that here we are limited to ASCII,
which lacks a lot of cues that other media have for more
complete communication. It is easy to disrespect one another,
yet when we do this, we lose something, especially when
responses escallate.
Honor first. The more we sustain respect for each other (even
when we don't feel like it) the more we accomplish in the long
run.
> Jim
> [email protected]
charghwI'
--
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