tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue May 14 21:14:18 1996
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Re: KLBC: Here we go again...
- From: [email protected] (Alan Anderson)
- Subject: Re: KLBC: Here we go again...
- Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 23:17:25 -0500
SajQa' writes:
> "SuvwI' QIch ghoj Qu' ngeDbe'. qa'vIn vIghurnIs!"
"A not-easy chore learns warrior's speech. I need to increase coffee!"
>What the heck I am trying to say is:
>
>It is not an easy task to learn the warrior's speech. I need more coffee!
English sentences which begin "It is..." do not translate easily into
Klingon. "It" here is a pronoun which stands for another sentence which
is given later, and "it" is used as the subject of the first sentence.
We don't have a way in Klingon to use a sentence as a subject, so this
construction fails. It must be rephrased before it can be translated.
{QIch} refers specifically to the sounds made by the voice. If that's
what you mean by "warrior's speech", fine; but I suspect that you really
want to say the "warrior's language" -- {SuvwI' Hol}.
See TKD 6.2.4 "Purpose clauses" for a possible way to say what you want.
How about this? {ngeDbe' SuvwI' Hol ghojmeH Qu'}
"The task in order to learn the warrior's tongue is not easy."
Fortunately, this doesn't seem to have any other legal interpretations
that *aren't* what you want.
"I need more coffee" also needs some recasting to get around the lack of
a simple word for "more". Perhaps {wej yap qa'vIn vItlhutlhta'bogh}
"The coffee which I have drunk is not yet enough." Or a bit simpler:
{wej qa'vIn yap vItlhutlhta'} "I have not yet drunk enough coffee."
>on on the subject of biting...:)...we were throwing it around again,
>after so many people commented that it might be taken up as an
>offer....so we tried of comming up with a way to say "Bite my Batleh!"
>
>Would that be yIchop betleHwIj! --- or maybe just yIchop! ....heh...heh..
No, it would be {betleHwIj yIchop}. The object comes before the verb.
-- ghunchu'wI' batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj