tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 26 19:49:54 1996

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Re: Yet another newbie.

Adam Winnington (QlojmIt) writes:
>Greetings All.

Hi there!  Gee, my first week as Beginners' Grammarian, and already I'm
seeing more newcomers than I noticed during the last six months.  I am
called ghunchu'wI', and I am here to help you in your study of this
language.  If you want me to comment on something you have written, or
if you just have a question, put "KLBC" somewhere in the subject.  That
will let me know I should read the note get back to you quickly.  It also
indicates to others that they should hold off on their comments until I
have had a chance to reply, to keep from confusing you with suggestions
from many points of view.

>This is my first post, although I've been collecting these letters for a
>while, I haven't had the time to accually start translating them.  My first
>attempt at a sentance should read "I am a computer technican"
>
>De'wI' ChamwI' jIH

maj.
Aside from the spelling ({ch} should always be lower case), this is fine.
According to The Klingon Dictionary, section 3.4, this would literally be
"I am a computer's technician" or "I am a computers' technician."  The
noun-noun construction is specifically labelled as the Klingon possessive
construction, though the word "possessive" can probably be interpreted a
little more broadly than literal ownership.

>(A question here, the -wI' means "thing/person that does", so does that mean
>De' is compute and Cham is fix/repair?? (I'm stretiching "technicnan" here a
>bit))

Since neither {De'} nor {cham} appear in the dictionary as verbs, we
can't assume anything from the meaning of {De'wI'} and {chamwI'}.  As
far as we know, these words can't be broken down into smaller parts to
be used separately.

{tI'} already means "fix, repair", so it's somewhat unlikely that the
word {chamwI'} would mean the same thing as "repairman".  The English
word "computer" is a rather fossilized term; most computers today don't
"compute" much.  The main purpose of a modern computer is to process and
distribute information.  {De'} as a noun means "data, information", so a
hypothetical verb with the same spelling would probably refer to data
processing, and the noun {De'wI'} would hypothetically be reducible to
"data processor".  Since we don't have examples of these hypothetical
words, however, the entire discussion is pointless.  We can't infer much
from the limited examples at our disposal.

>wa'SaDlogh Heghtah nuch
>
>I hope means "A coward dies a thousand deaths."

majQa'!
(Again, watch the spelling -- it's {HeghtaH}.)  The {-taH} suffix puts
so much more into this phrase than the original English would suggest.
A simple {wa'SaDlogh Hegh nuch} would be translated about the same, but
{HeghtaH} indicates a continual dying, without a particular end in sight.
Either you have an remarkable grasp of the shades of meaning involved,
or this is an amazing accident.  Either way, {qaHoy'qu'}.

>Coments welcome.

You're off to a fine start.  Watch your spelling [in English, too --
"comments" has two "m"s! :-)], but keep writing!

>-QlojmIt

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

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