tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jan 16 17:05:43 1997

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RE: KLBC:Re:Quotable Quotes

January 16, 1997 5:34 PM EST, jatlh George Morton:

> >> Knowledge itself is power.
> >> Ipsa scientia potestas est.
> >> woQ 'oH Sov'e'
> >
> >"Knowledge is political authority."  This is one interpretation of the 
saying 
> >(although I've never seen it with the "itself" thrown in).  
> 
> How would I say "itself, himself, etc.?  Would it be possible to use the 
> suffix <-egh> alone, putting it after the noun to make it an adjective of 
sorts?

No.  {-'egh} is a *verb* suffix only, and is used to make the verb reflexive.  
There is no quick word for "itself" or the others.

Now, ask yourself this: what does "itself" *do* for a sentence?  What part 
does it play in clarifying the meaning?  I don't see it doing much, except for 
one thing: it emphasizes the noun it follows.  "Knowledge itself is power" is 
making "knowledge" a very important and distinguished part of this sentence.  
We have a way to do something like this in Klingon: the noun suffix {-'e'}.

Let me use a more generic word for "power": {HoS}.  {HoS 'oH Sov'e'}.  This is 
a little unclear, because you *always* have to put {-'e'} on the subject of 
one of these sentences.  But what about "The boy himself sees the officer"?  
{yaS legh loD'e'}.  See?  You've indicated that {loD} is the topic, or the 
whole point, of the statement.  It is distinguishing the noun.  This is not an 
exact, one-for-one correspondence with the "himself" idea, but it does much 
the same thing, I think.

> >> Even one hair has a shadow.
> >> Etiam capillus unus habet umbram.
> >> QIb ghajtaH wa' jIB chev
> 
> >{chev} doesn't mean "be seperate," as in "be a different thing."  It means 
> >"cause to be in two or more parts."  
> 
> How would <reH QIb ghajtaH wa' jIb> sound?

"One hair always has a shadow."  (Again, assuming, as others have pointed out, 
that you can say {wa' jIb} to indicate one strand of hair.)

> >> Fools laugh at the Klingon and Latin languages!
> >> Rident stolidi verba <Klingon> et Latina!
> >> tlhingan je <Latin> Holmey Hagh qoHpu'
> 
> >But you don't "laugh the language."  This is ungrammatical.  You must add 
> >some 
> >supporting context.  
> 
> So there is no way to say "at" in the sense I used here?

This is the sort of question that I answer by waving my context wand.  You've 
got to tell me what you want to say before I can tell you how such a thing 
would be constructed.  {tlhIngan Hol "Latin" Hol jatlhmo' ghotpu', Hagh 
qoHpu'.} "Because people speak Klingon and Latin, fools laugh."  I used {-mo'} 
here to get the idea across, but this doesn't hold for every case of saying 
the word "at."  Remember, recast according to your intended meaning!

> >> What the gods want happens soon.
> >> Cito fit quod dii volunt.
> >> vay' luneHchugh _Snapu'_ qas 'oH.
> >
> >What's "Snapu'"?
> 
> That was supposed to be <_Sanpu'_>  I couldn't find any word for "God", so I 

> tried to use this to mean "the Fates".

Oh, I see.  I probably would've figured it out, had it been spelled correctly. 
 You may want to document cases like that where you're using standard words to 
indicate proper nouns.

-- 
SuStel
Beginners' Grammarian
Stardate 97046.0

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