tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 28 12:11:36 1997

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Re: Language jokes show English speaking bias...



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>Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1997 14:13:37 -0700 (PDT)
>From: [email protected]
>
>I discovered another of those so-called *language-jokes*:
>{qul} fire is pronounced (roughly!) like "cool"
>and fire is certainly NOT cool...
>qul bIrbe'bej!

You mean "bIrbe'bej qul," right?  Don't forget word order.  But of course,
what SHOULD be {bIr}, in America?  Why, beer, of course!  (Unless like me
you have a taste for more room-temperature-ready British brews).  And
beer/ale is HIq, because it makes you hiccough, and and and... :)

>lutqoq tlhaQ latlh vISampu'

We've learned that {latlh} precedes, haven't we?

>lut tlhaQqoq wa' vItu'pu'

{wa'}, being a number, also precedes: wa' lutqoq tlhaQ vItu'pu'.  Only
type-5 noun-suffixes migrate to the end of a modifying verb-as-adjective.

>(how do I say that correctly?)
>(chay' vIjatlh 'e' jIlugh?)

{chay' vIjatlhchu'?} would be better.  Look closely at what you said:
{chay' vIjatlh}/"how do I say it", then {'e'} refers to the previous
sentence ("how do I say it?") as the object of {jIlugh}/"I am right"--which
has no object.  You could just use -chu' as I did; that would probably be
the cleanest answer.  Or you can get wordy and say {chay' jIlugh
vIjatlhtaHvIS}/"How [can] I be correct while saying it?"

~mark

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