tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 21 11:13:22 1995
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Re: A sentence which I really don't think translates well into Klingon.
>Date: Tue, 21 Nov 1995 08:31:55 -0800
>From: "d'Armond Speers" <[email protected]>
>> >Daq yInejbogh Hurgh law' Hoch Hurgh puS
>>
>> I'm honestly not sure this is
>> wrong. I can't find a really good reason to reject it, and even my
>> instincts aren't telling me it's necessarily bad.
>I don't see a grammatical reason to reject it, but just because something
>is grammatical doesn't mean it's *acceptable*. We see it all the time,
>with what you call "hindsight" words. My point is, if someone said this
>to you, would you understand it?
>reH DujlIj tIvoq. But I don't see myself understanding this. I can't
>wrap my mind around the /yI-/ and /-bogh/ together. I can't point you to
>a rule in TKD; all I can say is that they don't feel to me to be meant
>for each other.
You're correct about hindsight words... But as I said, I'm not sure I would
be lost. There *is* a logic to using "-bogh" and imperatives together, or
there can be. You can view the sentence with an imperative prefix as
saying "act in such a manner that this sentence is true if you replace the
imperative prefix with the corresponding indicative one." Usually this
winds up as simply "Do X." But here we get something that English has a
tough time with... but why should Klingon? I wonder if you can use
imperative prefixes with "-lu'". Hmmm...
Oh, and it's probably "Duj yIvoq", despite what's written in TKD. After
all, we know that collective irregular plurals construe as singular.
~mark