tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 12 09:51:29 1996
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Re: _Memory_Prime_
>Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 16:33:54 -0800
>From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
>~mark writes:
>>>shocked bartender cries out:
>>
>>> "ghobe'!"
>>
>>I think "Qo'" makes more sense in this case, but hey.
>I thought so too, at first, but after I looked it up I'm not so sure.
>{Qo'} seems to mean only "*I* refuse," and the idea I think the bartender
>wants to get across is "*You* don't do it." {yIruchQo'} seems right for
>this, but {ruch} is from the Addendum and wouldn't have been available to
>the author of _Memory Prime_. It's too long a word, anyway. A simple
>{mev!} might have been appropriate.
jIQoch.
I think "Qo'" *can* indeed mean refusal for someone else too. Think of it
as almost a slangy clipping of the command not to do whatever down to
nothing but its negative suffix. It's something I'm hoping to make myself
more careful about in Klingon: the two different "yes"es and the two
different "no"s. "HIja'" and "ghobe'", in my opinion, should ONLY be used
to answer yes/no questions; to confirm or deny a proposition. They
indicate nothing but truth or falsehood. For other uses of "yes" and "no",
we have "lu'" and "Qo'". "Hey, Captain, bring me some tea." "Qo', get it
yourself." Or even more politely "Come along with us in our ship!" "Qo',
I need to stay a little later; I'll drive myself."
Hrm... It looks like TKD isn't giving me the support I was hoping for; its
definition is pretty first-person. I don't know. I still think that "Qo'"
works better than "ghobe'" for "don't do that"...
~mark