tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jul 11 09:50:06 1996

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Re: KLBC: Questions on word translation

At 17.44 10/07/96 -0700, you wrote:


>>Nationality              rewbe' (citizen)
>You don't say "his citizenship is".  You say "he is a citizen of".
>A citizen of Mexico would be {*Mexico* rewbe'}.

If I what to question ones citizenship I should ask "what is your
citizenship" can work something like "nuqrewbe'lI'"? 


>>Place of Birth          Daq-???
>>Not having found a term for birth I can't come up with a word to use
>>together with Daq (place) Any ideas?
>
>If you're describing a birthplace, give its name!  {*Indiana*Daq jIbogh}.

No, my intention is to ask or label a birthplace. Maybe something like
"nuqDaq bIbogh" but in order to label it I need a noun, something like
"birthplace: Indiana". If it was possible Iwould use boghDaq but Ihave
understood that I can't mix verbs with noun suffixes

>>sex
>>i didn't found any Klingon word in the Klingon Dictionary indicating the sex
>>of person or animals. Is there any?
>
>How can you have missed {loD} "male" and {be'} "female"?

Infact, I didn't, but if I must label or ask which sex an animal or person,
I didn't figure out a way to use them until Dave Yeung suggested  {loD be'
ghap}. I like it as a question but as I told before, if I must label
something like "Sex: male" I would have words only for the second part of
the label, lod. There is nowhere a word for sex as far I know.


>>Height
>{jen} is actually given as "be high", exactly what you were looking for.
>If you absolutely *must* refer to something's "height", you can use the
>suffix {-ghach} to give a meaning a bit like "continuity of being high":
>{jentaHghach}.  But we don't really know the right way to say *how* high
>something is.

Ok, I think that this is the best solution. But if {ghach} is a nominalizer,
which if I understood the TKD, make possible to use certain verbs as nouns,
I should be autorized to use this solution also for other verbs or this can
be used only with limited verbs? It puzzle me a little bit because at p. 176
of TKD says that "it is not known if all verbs can be used as nouns..." So
which guidelines one should follow using this syntactic maker?


>[In the TNG episode "Rightful Heir", Gowron asks the Kahless-clone to tell
>him the color of the eyes of the fool who died challenging the storm.]

Yes, I remember that episode, so it should exist a Klingon term not yet
known to us that describe the color.


>It sounds an awful lot like you're trying to translate a driver's license
>or something similar.  DON'T DO IT LIKE THIS! :-)  Don't label a bunch of
>blanks and fill them in.  Don't attempt to translate "hair:  black"; say
>instead {qIj jIb} "the hair is black".

I see, better to use a full sentence in place of a label. Indeed this
questions came up looking a bunch of paperwork that I have on my desk, and I
came up thinking how could be a Klingon version of this paperwork. Surely
also the Klingon Empire have the need to classify and document the
characteristics of his citizens. :-) So I was trying to figure out how would
look a Klingon ID card as writing exercise, but it is less easy that I
thought to find similar terms. Especially those that on the TKD exist only
in verbal form while in Terran languages we use them as nouns. For this
reason even if it's interesting the solution to trasform them in questions,
it would fit bad in a ID card a label that reads "What is your name" better
"The name is" :-)


Thanks,

Andrea

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