tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 14 21:23:14 1996
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Re: KLBC: 'to be Klingon' & some sentences
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: KLBC: 'to be Klingon' & some sentences
- Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 00:24:36 -0500
Paul van Berlo writes:
>Hi!
Hi, Paul!
>Uhm, this is the first time I ever tried to make a sentence in Klingon. I'm
>keeping it simple.
[Good for you. :-)]
> He is a coward - nuch ghaH
maj.
> I am proud to be Klingon - tlhIngan Hem jIH
This accidentally makes sense. It actually means "I am a proud Klingon",
which is pretty close to what you wanted to say.
> De-activate the force field! - Surchem yIchu'Ha!
Fine, except that you misspelled the suffix {-Ha'}.
>I hope these are correct. I'm not sure of the 'to be Klingon' part. I just
>translated it into 'Klingon'.
That's definitely not the right way to do it. If you start blindly
translating words without understanding the grammar, you wind up with
garbage like {qab jIH ngIl}, apparently a feeble attempt by someone at
Paramount to translate "face me if you dare." :-( You were just lucky
that your sentence came out well.
What you need to do is understand how Klingon grammar puts together
words and phrases to convey meaning. In the case of "I am proud to
be Klingon" we need to find the right structure. The usual way one
would say something like this is "Because I am Klingon, I am proud"
{tlhIngan jIHmo' jIHem}.
You can't easily get a good grasp of the grammar simply by reading TKD;
you'll have to practice reading some (well-written) Klingon in order to
be able to recognize and recreate the patterns. If you want to try to
say something but you're not sure how to do it correctly, give it a try
anyway and I can help you sort out the problems and point you in the
right direction.
>This is for starters, let's hope I will learn
>to write/speak Klingon well someday :)
This is a fine beginning. yItaH, taghwI'!
-- ghunchu'wI' batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj