tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Apr 10 20:14:26 1996

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Re: jI'It

jeHwI' writes:
>>Do you mean that as of yesterday the book had arrived, or that the
>>book actually arrived yesterday?
>
>At the time of that writing, the book had actually arrived yesterday.

wejpuH.  This isn't *either* of the meanings I expected, and it doesn't
help to pin down what really happened.  "Had arrived" says the arrival
was already finished at the time in question, and the time in question
is "yesterday" in your sentence.  I must conclude that either the book
arrived sometime before yesterday, or you don't completely understand
"perfective" in either Klingon *or* English.

It appears that you translated "the book had arrived yesterday" correctly.
However, even in English this is hard to understand.  My question remains:
Did you mean that the book arrived *while* yesterday occurred, or did you
mean that it had *already* arrived when yesterday occurred?

>>>DaH HIjwI' vI'oy'qangbe'.  ;)
>
>>If you want to say "I hurt [someone else]" it has to be {vI'oy'moH}.
>>Perhaps {QIH} would make sense too.
>
>In that case, I was trying to say that since the book had arrived, I was
>unwilling to hurt the postman.  ;)

You got the "unwilling" part okay, but the verb {'oy'} means "ache, hurt,
be sore"; it doesn't work if you are talking about hurting someone else.  I
was
trying to point out that you need to use {-moH} to get that meaning.

-- ghunchu'wI'               batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj

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