tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Aug 02 10:42:54 1998

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Re: List for beginners???

--K'ryntes <[email protected]> wrote:
> Nathan Grange wrote:

Looks like this is private correspondence that hit the list by accident.
I say majQa'!  SujawtaHvIS tlhIngan Hol bolo'mo' Sughojbej.

I'm going to give you a few tools to use so you don't have to take
shortcuts that might stick in your head.

> > bIlugh, maghItlhnISchoHbej *more*

That's such a lovely suffixed verb I can see why you left it there
even when you ran into a problem with how to finish the sentence in
Klingon.

If you'd said:
bIlugh, maghItlhqu'nISchoHbej.

I would have understood that you needed to start to /ghItlhqu'/ which
I would have understood as an increase in effort or concentration or
maybe quantity.  

Whenever you stop for lack of a word in Klingon, unless the word is a
noun that names an object or a verb that names an action or state, you
probably need to stop and look at what the sentence actually means,
then use a different Klingon construction.

In this case the sentence in English "We need to write more" is
actually an incomplete comparative.  "We need to write more than ...
[we already are]."  But I wouldn't recommend using the comparative to
express this.
You could say.  QImmeymaj DIlaw'choHmoH - we need to make our messages
numerous, we need to increase the number of our messages.  

> HIja', pup lIng qeq.

There's another case of an English form that is hiding the real grammar.
"Practice makes perfect."

If you think carefully about the English, you realize that while
"practice" is a noun in English, "perfect" isn't a noun.  You'd never
talk about "a perfect" or "the perfect."  The noun in this saying has
been left out.  "Practice makes [something] perfect" or "Practice
causes [something] to become perfect."  I think you know where I'm
going with this, because you used one of these suffixes perfectly
above.   

/pupchoHmoH qeq/

Very literally, "A drill perfects."

> DaH jIQong. ramDaq jIQap. jajDaq jIQong.

To say "at" a time, don't use /-Daq/. Just say the time.  The suffix
/-Daq/ refers to physical location, and Klingons don't use spatial
terminology with time the way English speakers do. And a couple of
vocabulary notes: /Qap/ = work, as in function "the device works" /Qap
jan/.  /vum/ = work, as in do one's job.  /jaj/ = day, as in 24h period.
/pem/ refers to daytime.

ram jIvum.  pem jIQong.
At night I worked.  I slept in the daytime.

You can also use /qaStaHvIS X/ "while X occurs" to talk about
something happening during a period of time.

qaStaHvIS pem jIQong - I sleep during the daytime.

> Sorry if this doesn't make any sense. I'm a QelHom (thanks >
ghunchu'wI')  and I'm
> suffering from severe sleep deprivation.  I wanted to reply quickly
> though
> because your post made me happy.

It does make sense, it just shows that there are a couple of 'Klingon
idiom' you need to learn.  And I know it's no fair correcting stuff
that was private mail written while you were sleep deprived. 
jImaybe'. :)  We (the BGs whom I've ever chatted to about how great
our beginners are) would like to see more casual chat between
beginners posted to the KLBC. If someone writes, "don't correct
*everything* that's wrong just give me a couple thing to work on" I
can abide by that, and not interrupt the conversation too much.

> > (I read 6.6, but couldn't work out whether the word I had would
fit > > into the
> > layout suggested)
> 
> Yipes.  Got me.  I just looked at that section and trying to 
> understand it made
> me want to barf.

Sympathetic grin.  Lets see if I can control the nausea.
In Klingon if you want to compare two things, to say that "A is more X
than B" or "A is Xer than B" or "there are more A's than B's" you use
a special barf-inducing construction unrealted to anything else in
Klingon.  The general form is:

A X law' B X puS

A and B both have to be nouns or "noun phrases," that is a group of
words that have the effect of being a noun.  Examples of acceptable
A/B pairs:

romuluS/Qo'noS - Romulus/Kronos
jIH/SoH  - you/me
targh ghIch/targh nuj - a targ's nose/a targ's mouth
jItlhutlhtaHvIS QIch/jISoptaHvIS QIch - speech while I'm
drinking/speech while I'm eating
mang vIHoHbogh/yaS DaHoHbogh - the older whom I killed/the officer
whom you killed

Some of these may be contructions you don't use yet, but you get the
idea.  Step one is to take the two concepts you have to compare and
bash them into the shapes of nouns.  Sometimes it's tricky.

Step two is to find X.  X has to be a verb of quality or state.  These
generally start with "be" in the wordlist.  Examples are: QaQ tIn law'
Qup Say' potlh Dogh. 

Once you have identified A B and X you fit them into the formula. 
Exactly, not worrying about how exactly it works.  You put the thing
that has more of quality X in the A position and the one that has less
of quality X in the B position. That's step three.

romuluS tuj law' Qo'noS tuj puS - Romulus is hotter than Qo'noS.
jIH 'IH law' SoH 'IH puS - I am prettier/more handsome than you are.
targh ghIch QaD law' targh nuj QaD puS - A targ's nose is drier than
its mouth.
Qo'noSDaq tlhInganpu' law' law' tera'Daq tlhInganpu' law' puS - On
Qo'nos Klingons are more numerous than they are on Earth.  (Notice
that you use /law'/ three times: once in each X position and once
again in its fixed position in the law'/puS).
yuch QaQ law' yol QaQ puS  - Chocolate is better than conflict
(Klingon counterculture hippies).  Note how "better" is "more good
than."

Lots of examples, hope that helps.
 
> By the way, cool name, vIQles.
> 
> --K'ryntes, QelHom Doy'

yIQongchu'.  SIDpu'lI'vaD tlhIngan Hol yIjatlhQo'.
==

Qov - Beginners' Grammarian

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