tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Mar 01 20:56:23 1996
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Re: KLBC: Some sentences for your grammatic eye
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: KLBC: Some sentences for your grammatic eye
- Date: Fri, 1 Mar 1996 23:58:02 -0500
Eskil Heyn Olsen writes:
>"I will soon be drunk"
>{tugh jIchech}
>
>Pretty straightforward, adjective and then "i am drunk".
Yes, except that {tugh} is an *adverbial* (there are no Klingon adjectives).
And, of course, in context this might meen "I *was* soon drunk."
>"In the future I will be hungover"
>{poH nI' juSpu' vaj jI'uH}
>
>Ouch, the "in the future" was difficult. I hope my klingon sentence
>can be translated as "When long time has passed, then I will be hung
>over" (if the use of time as a object is allowed ?).
{juS} "pass" probably doesn't apply to time; for that we have {qaS} "occur".
"A long time has occurred" is {qaSpu' poH nI'} -- time is the *subject*.
If you want to say "*when* it has occurred..." you must use the verb suffix
{-DI'}. The result: {qaSpu'DI' poH nI' vaj jI'uH}. However, this might
just as easily mean "After a long time *had* occured, then I *was* drunk."
The "future" meaning has to be made clear either with other context or with
an explicit reference to a specific time in the future.
>"I will continue to buy swords"
>{'etlhmey jIje'bejlI'}
>
>Plural swords followed by "I buy" with a continuation suffix. And at
>some point I will stop buying swords.
This sentence has an object -- "swords" -- so needs the verb prefix {vI-}.
The {-lI'} suffix implies to me that you are (or were, or will be) in the
process of purchasing a particular group of swords, not that you keep on
buying more swords. Again, there's absolutely nothing here that specifies
whether the purchase is happening in the past, present, or future.
>"today you have sold me three perfect swords"
>{DaHjaj wej 'etlh pup choje'ta'}
>
>Used {-ta'} instead of {-pu'}, I presume he sold me the swords on
>pupose :-)
{choje'ta'} means "you have *bought* me"; you probably meant to use {ngev}.
Otherwise, it's okay. [I don't care for this sort of prefix usage; the
*real* object of this sentence is the swords. But it's canon, and I live
with it.]
>"I seem to be lost in the green forest"
>{ngem'a'Daq SuD DaqwIj jISovbe'law'}
>
>Since I couldn't find a verb for "be lost", I ended with what
>hopefully translates as "In the huge forest that is green, I
>apparently do not know my location".
Yes, that's how I translate it.
-- ghunchu'wI' batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj