tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 18 13:17:14 1996
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Re: KLBC:imperative prefixes-commands
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>Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 17:04:46 -0800
>From: "David Trimboli" <[email protected]>
>
>jatlh 'aDam:
>
>> In my first letter,I asked u do I say "do".i ment "do" like 'in how *do* I
>do
>> it?'
>
>In Klingon, it's not used. For example,
You need to remember that when you're translating from any language into
any other language, words do not translate one-for-one. The English "do"
that you mention is a notorious example, since it's not really a verb with
a meaning of its own in these types of sentences. It's just an auxiliary.
The statement form of a sentence might be "I say..." but the question-form
reads "how DO I say...?" Where'd that "do" come from? It doesn't mean
anything, it's just there for grammatical reasons (since in English as in
French a normal way to form questions is by reversing the order of the
subject and the verb, "I say..." can become "How say I...?" but in the
course of time people became used to recasting it to "I do say..." before
inverting to "How do I say...?" in order to have the preposed verb
consistent for most questions).
'aDam, you're a Hebrew speaker: would you say "'eikh 'ani 'oseh 'omer
<<shalom>> b'tzarfatit?"? Surely not! The "do" isn't part of the Hebrew
sentence. And it isn't in Klingon either.
~mark
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