tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat May 18 11:37:47 1996

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



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

Re: KLBC:UK "Proverb"



nuqHm writes:
>Don't kick the dog up the bum when you've got your hand in its mouth !
>[surely words of infinite wisdom !]

charghwI' is right -- why care about *where* you don't kick the dog?

>I've gotten this far...
>
>*up the bum* targh yIpupQo' 'oHtaHvIs ghoplIj nujDajDaq
>
>broken down as follows...
>
>*up the bum* (sic!)
>
>targh           -        ~Dog
>
>yIpupQo'        -       Don't you kick it

So far, so good.

>'oHtaHvIs       -       whilst it is ongoing (that)
>
>ghoplIj         -       your hand
>
>nujDajDaq       -       his mouth - locative (is in his mouth ?)

No, you're missing the structure of this sentence.  In order to express
"it is in his mouth", Klingon says {nujDajDaq 'oH}.  To add a definite
noun as the subject, that noun goes after the pronoun/verb, and gets the
suffix {-'e'} (see TKD section 6.3).  So this idea becomes:
{...nujDajDaq 'oHtaHvIS ghoplIj'e'}.

>Look as I might, I could find nothing even CLOSE to rephrase "up the bum"!

Among friends, I might use slang, but I won't encourage it among beginners.

>Complements on teh Klingon Way and the Book of Suffixes (it has already
>started to preserve the spine of my TKD !)

Sounds like you need to make yourself some personalized reference sheets!
Separate lists of prefixes and suffixes save *lots* of wear and tear on TKD.

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




Back to archive top level