tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jul 14 22:53:30 1996

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Re: KLBC: Questions on word translation

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

{nuq rewbe' SoH} "You are a citizen of what?" or
{nuqDaq rewbe' SoH} "Where are you a citizen?"

The first one would work much better if I could ask "what country", but
I don't if there's a correct way to use {nuq} for this meaning.

>>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".

Huh?  "Indiana" *is* a noun.

{nuqDaq bogh} "Where was he born?"
{*Mexico*Daq bogh} "He was born in Mexico."

>>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.

No, there isn't (at least not in the sense of "gender" as you want it).
But you're looking for a noun that you don't need!  You don't have to say
"His *sex* is male."

{be' ghaH'a'?  loD ghaH'a'} "Is he/she female or male?"
{loD ghaH} "He is a male."

>>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}.
>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?

{-ghach} fits on any verb, but it doesn't fit well on a verb that doesn't
have another verb suffix.  Okrand tells us that while the resulting word
can have an understandable meaning, it's a "highly marked" form that might
draw attention to the unusual phrasing at the expense of that meaning.  The
best usages of I've encountered all seem to nominalize the suffix coming
immediately before {-ghach}, thus my "continuity of being high" above.

>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?

That sentence in TKD is referring to verbs like {bel} "be pleased", where
there is an identically-spelled noun {bel} "pleasure".  Many verbs have a
noun counterpart with the same spelling, but not all do.  But even in the
case of {bel}, there is no noun {*belHa'} "displeasure"; a verb having a
suffix cannot be used as a noun.  That's what {-ghach} is for:  in order
to say "displeasure" one says {belHa'ghach}.

>>[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.

{SuD mInDu'Daj}.  {Hurgh mInDu'Daj}.  {Doq minDu'Daj}.
Our collection of color-words *is* unusually small, but the words exist.

>...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" :-)

Anything that you can phrase as a question can be answered with a statement.
{ponglIj 'oH nuq'e'} "What is your name?"
{pongwIj 'oH qeylIS'e'} "My name is Kahless."

But now I don't know what you're trying to translate.  Is it a form to be
filled out, or is it an ID card?  A form consists of questions and places
in which to enter answers; that's what I've had in mind while suggesting
appropriate ways to deal with it.  An ID card only has to *identify* its
owner; the owner himself is present and doesn't need to be described.

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

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