tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 21 17:04:32 1996
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: nuqneH
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: nuqneH
- Date: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 20:05:56 -0500
Welcome to the list, Sprite! Forgive the lateness of this reply. We are
not intentionally ignoring you; the responsibility of assisting beginners
has recently changed hands and I didn't want to jump in prematurely.
I'm called ghunchu'wI', and I'm the list's current Beginners' Grammarian.
My job is specifically to help people who are beginning to learn to write
and/or speak tlhIngan Hol.
If you want feedback on what you have written, put KLBC (Klingon Language
Beginners' Conference) in the subject line of the message. That tells me
that I should look at the message quickly. I will be ready to assist you
with any questions you have, or to check your grammar, or simply to offer
my opinion on your writing. The KLBC marker also indicates that the rest
of the people on the list ought not to jump in with their comments before
I have had a chance to give my response.
Sprite Seaman writes:
>tlhIngan Hol ghojwI' jIH. tInbe' SovghachwIj 'ach vIghurtaH.
This is all grammatically correct, but it's not the usual way it would be
said by a "true Klingon." The Klingon vocabulary tends to concentrate on
verbs instead of nouns, and using the verb "to be" is rather uncommon.
Instead of "I am a learner of the Klingon language," it would be more in
the spirit of the language to say "I learn the Klingon language," thus:
{tlhIngan Hol vIghoj}.
The word {SovghachwIj} is both extremely unusual and unnecessary. Using
{-ghach} on a bare verb with no other suffixes really calls attention to
the word; it's not forbidden as such, but it's very strange. But in this
case, it's not needed, since {Sov} is already a perfectly good noun which
means "knowledge" (see the addendum). {tInbe' SovwIj} is just fine. (By
the way, "be small" is {mach} -- that's from one of the cassette tapes.)
{ghur} might mean "increase" in one of two ways, either "to become larger"
or "to make (something else) larger" -- we don't know which is correct, or
if both are okay, but I thought I'd introduce you to "the transitivity
question." You have used it as "to make larger," which is fine, but it's
harder to get the "to become larger" meaning out of it. If, however, we
assume "to become larger" is correct, then in order to say "to make larger"
we need merely to add the causative suffix to say {ghurmoH}.
>QaQ'a' 'e'?
It *was* good, until this question. :-) {'e'} is always used as the
object of a verb, never the subject.
>"wIwamlu'taH"
maj. "We are always hunted" is a fine watchphrase.
>jIH
You obviously have spent some time learning the language. You also have
started small, which is a *very* good sign! :-) I hope you stick around
and continue to learn and improve.
-- ghunchu'wI' batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj