tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 15 10:25:44 1995
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Re: haiku
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: haiku
- Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 13:25:40 -0500
- In-reply-to: <[email protected]> (message from Adam Walker onTue, 14 Nov 1995 12:47:03 -0800)
>Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 12:47:03 -0800
>From: Adam Walker <[email protected]>
>I sat down the other day to try my hand at the ancient tlhingan art of
>*Hayku'*. What do you think?
Well, obviously you typoed a little here; if you're going to bother
transliterating "haiku" into Klingon (using the ' at the end and all), you
should remember that there's no "k" in Klingon.
>jaghwIj nujvo''a'
>Doqbogh nIjtaH Iw'. Dunbej.
>'ItHa' jiH. yayqu"!
I'm really lost all through this. Let me try to take it slowly, first the
words one by one and then how they combine
"jaghwIj": my enemy. Made an insult because you used "-wIj" instead of
"-wI'" which you ordinarily would for a sentient entity (like most enemies
are).
"nujvo''a'": I'm already lost. "nuj" is a noun (mouth), on which you have
attached two noun-suffixes in the wrong order. "-'a'" is a type-1 suffix
and "-vo'" is a type-9 suffix. They should go in the order "nuj'a'vo'",
meaning "from the great mouth(s)." Combined with the previous word, we get
"jaghwIj nuj'a'vo'"/"from the great mouth(s) of my !!%$# enemy/ies." OK...
"Doqbogh": "be red" with a relative-clause marker. So something is read,
and presumably that something, the subject of the verb "Doq", will follow
the verb (as all subjects do their verbs), and "jaghwIj nuj'a'vo'" is
either modifying that sentence (about the thing being red) or the matrix
clause. So I'm waiting to see "XXX, which is red from the mouth of my
enemy" or "from the my enemy, XXX, which is red..."
nIjtaH: leaks-continuously. Wait, where's my XXX? I need a subject for
"Doqbogh". A relative verb with *both* subject and object elided seems
very unusual and hard to guess at. If you're hoping to use a noun from
later in the sentence, I really don't see it working here. Oh well,
anyway, we've hit the main verb of the sentence. Now to find the subject.
"'Iw": blood. OK, great. This is probably what you wanted as the subject
of "Doqbogh". In which case, it's in the wrong place. Maybe "nIjtaH
Doqbogh 'Iw".
"Dunbej": [it] is certainly wonderful. OK.
"'ItHa'": [he/she/it/they] is/are un-depressed. OK, waiting for the subjec
of this...
"jIH": I. Wait... that can't be the subject of "'ItHa'", because it's
conjugated for a third-person subject. You need the prefix for "jIH", and
that's "jI'ItHa'". In which case you can drop the "jIH", or leave it, for
emphasis.
"yayqu'": This is a noun (yay) with a verb-suffix (-qu'). Syntax
error. "yay'qu'" would be grammatical, but it would mean "he/she/it/they
is/are extremely shocked." Probably not quite what you had in mind.
I think I got the sense of the poem, but remember that Klingon does not
have so free a word-order as English, and that you have to conjugate all
your verbs.
~mark