tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 15 10:51:32 1995

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Re: Confusion and unconditional surrender (was: vocabulary..)



>Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 13:42:01 -0800
>From: hfp95118 <[email protected]>

>> >jIQoS 'ach jabbI'IDvam lI'nISlu'
>> >
>> >(is that a passable translation, in context, of, "(Well,) I'm sorry, but
>> >someone had to say it.." ?)
>> 
>> toH
>> "veqlarghmo' vIghItlh" vImaSqu'
>> 'ach bIQoS'a' ... Suqoy'qang'a' qatlh
>> toDujbe''a' SoH

>Um, I'm confused. I'm going to write what I think this says, but it looks 
>wrong to me. I don't want to be questioning the writings of my elders and 
>betters (well, elders, at least ;) but, I'll say it again, I'm confused.
>My interpretation:

I recall thinking there was something wrong with that post too... Let's see
what you thought.

>"veqlarghmo' vIghItlh" vImaSqu'
>   I prefer "because of the fek'lhr, I wrote it/this"

Yep, that's what it looks like to me.  And it makes sense.  It's the
author's pet expression for "The devil made me write it", and it works.

>'ach bIQoS'a' ... SuQoy'qang'a' qatlh 
>   But are you sorry? ... why are you (all) willing to beg?
>   (this is where I start to get confused: isn't the coexistance 
>   here of the question *qatlh and the question-suffix -'a' 
>   superfluous?)

Yes it is.  And what's more, qatlh is in the wrong place.  qatlh comes at
the beginning of the sentence, not the end.  And why the shift from
singular to plural?  Oh, different people addressed?

>toDujbe''a' SoH
>   I don't get this :( ... to me it looks like you stuck a -be, a 
>   verb-suffix, onto a noun. I think what you're asking is "are you 
>   without courage?"  

Yes, I see what you mean.  I'd agree with you, except that there is another
reading.  If you take "be'" to be a *noun*, not a suffix, you get a
compound noun of "toDuj"+"be''a'": You are a great courage-woman.  The
other reading has all sorts of problems, like no verb-prefix on the
purported verb, etc...

~mark


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