tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 01 19:23:24 1996

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: _Julius Caesar_ quote

On Mon, 1 Jul 1996, Alan Anderson wrote:

> Beau-Kevin Morgan <[email protected]> writes:
> >pe'vIl mIS'a' jach veS qu'Negh QeymoHHa'moH
> >-I hope I haven't _completely_ mangled this!
> 
> "He shouts intensely 'great confusion';
> he causes war's be-fierce-soldiers to untighten [something]."
> 
> It's two sentences, so they should either be separated clearly or joined
> unambiguously with a conjunction.  The original line uses the conjunction
> "and" between them; I expect you would want to keep as close to it as you
> can, so you should use {'ej} to connect them.

I was wavering on whether or not to use a sentence conjunction: I think my
sleep-deprived brain was trying to justify "fluidity" with the omission :)

> These should be written as commands, using the imperative verb prefix
> {yI-}.  Without a prefix they are merely statements, reporting what an
> unspecified subject is doing.
> 
> The first sentence is a quote, which itself acts a little like a pair of
> adjacent sentences.  The adverbial {pe'vIl} is part of the command, not
> the quote; I'd arrange the words {pe'vIl yIjach mIS'a'}.  The quote can
> either precede or follow the verb of saying.
> 
> What do you mean by the word {qu'negh}?  If you intended to separate the
> two syllables, it means "The soldiers are fierce."  We don't have a rule
> for combining verbs and nouns into new words; there's no way to interpret
> how this should be read if it's a single word.  [Most attempts I've seen
> to translate this line refer to {veS targhmey} "the targs of war".]

I'm afraid I _was_ trying to combine those into a new word.:) You're
right, though; how would anyone _else_ know what I was trying to
accomplish when there is no rule for doing this? I don't really like the
idea of {veS targhmey} - aren't Targs visualized as pig-like critters? I
shouldn't like to be referred to as a "Pig of War"...although it _is_ more
"boar"like than anything. I suppose I was just being obstinate.:)
 
> You used two {-moH} suffixes on the verb in the second sentence; that is
> not permitted.  The so-called rover {-Ha'} is *always* placed immediately
> after the root verb, never after another suffix.  The dictionary already
> has the entry {QeyHa'moH} "loosen".
> 
> Would you like to try again, or would you like to see how I translate it?
> 
> -- ghunchu'wI'               batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj
> 

So pe'vIl yIjach mIS'a' 'ej veS targhmey QeyHa'moH would be a better way
to say it, or is there an even better way? (I'm assuming there is:)

Back to archive top level