tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jul 12 07:38:38 1997
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Re: Space Cadets
<http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/spacecadets>
ja' Qov:
>>Using a {-vo'}-marked noun after another noun to modify it?!
>It was pretty weird. But the person who did it understood enough
>of the rest of the grammar that I do not believe s/he did it in ignorance.
If it were the only oddity in the piece, I might agree with you. But I
see so many other places that cry out "I do *not* know what I'm doing"
throughout the whole thing. I can't bring myself to hear the cry instead
as "Look at me, I can create novel yet correct grammar!"
>>Placing a {-meH} clause at the end of a sentence?!
>As there was no punctuation, it's hard to say which sentence it was in.
But there *is* punctuation -- there is a period following the {machenmoHmeH},
and there's a large chunk of white space between it and the beginning of the
next sentence. The first sentence definitely ends with:
"...batlh majaHtaHvIS logh ghovpu' qo' machenmoHmeH."
Then there's the odd simultaneous use of {Sum} and {tu'lu'}, where {Sum}
by itself would carry the idea perfectly but {tu'lu'} seems to be in there
just to satisfy the wording of the English phrase.
>Shrug. I see the flexibility and creativity of someone used to the
>tlhIngan Hol mindset, willing to deviate from the English to translate the
>real meaning, while sticking surprisingly close to it.
I truly don't understand how you see this. I could barely make out any
"real meaning" in the first, long, convoluted, grammar-defying sentence.
Having seen the intended meaning in the form of a mismatched translation,
I don't think it "deviates" from the English much at all. It does stick
surprisingly close to Klingon grammar while trying to emulate the English
phrasing, but it isn't close enough for me to accept as valid.
> The person would
>seem to have some contact with our Klingon community: they used -'e' as a
>relative clause head marker.
That {-'e'} is on a {latlh} which comes at the *end* of a noun phrase (the
Skybox cards reveal that {latlh} goes first), and the relative clause looks
like it has a {-Daq} on the *verb*! It all looks like a mess to me.
> And I see a couple of constructs so strange
>that they have to be deliberate.
Deliberate? Undoubtedly. Grammatically correct? I don't think so.
-- ghunchu'wI'