tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 05 21:03:59 1998
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Re: Exercises?
- From: Robyn Stewart <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Exercises?
- Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 20:57:16 -0700 (PDT)
---Matthew Peperell <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 01, 1998 at 12:09:10AM -0700, Robyn Stewart wrote:
> > Translate into Klingon:
> > We will defeat you(plural).
> rejey.
> Some of these prompted me to ask something that TKD mentions but
doesn't
> clarify. How do you differentiate between tenses? In particular the
notion
> of a future tense. For example {rejey} above could also mean 'we are
> defeating you'. I could have used the adverb {tugh} in addition,
but the
> meaning will have deviatede from the one you requested.
Excellent question. The answer is, by context and/or by specifying
when it will happen. This may be strange and unnerving for an English
speaker who can't even say most verbs without giving tense, but it's
the way Klingon works.
rejey - we will defeat you/we defeat you/we defeated you
wa'Hu' rejey - yesterday we defeated you
wa'leS rejey - tomorrow we will defeat you
Consider English:
"I hit the golf ball and put it in the hole."
Is it past or present?
"She will not eat it."
Is that a report on a present refusal or a prediction of future
refusal? (That's ignoring the simple future meaning).
Same idea for every Klingon verb. It's very important to realize that
if a sentence is set in the past or in the future, that there is
nothing you can do to the verb to show this. You have to use a time
stamp.
yIH vIHoH. - could be past, present or future.
wa'Hu' yIH vIHoH - Yesterday I killed the tribble - past
wa'leS yIH vIHoH - Tomorrow I will kill the tribble - future
DaHjaj yIH vIHoH - past/present/future?
DaH yIH vIHoH - Now I kill the tribble (present) or maybe (see below)
"will kill" (future).
DaH yIH vIHoHta' - Now I have killed the tribble. (present perfective)
DaH yIH vIHoHlI' - Now I am killing the tribble. (present continuous)
DaH SIbI' yIH vIHoH - Now I will immediately kill the tribble (future)
tugh yIH vIHoHta' - Soon I will have killed the tribble (future
perfective)
Note that /yIH vIHoHta'/ doesn't imply past, present or future tense
in any way. The only reason that I can say that /DaH yIH vIHoHta'/ is
present tense is that it doesn't make sense as any other tense. It
can't be "now" and past at the same time, and you can't have completed
an action in the future as of now: the completion is now, so the
sentence must be present.
As I write this I realize /DaH vIHoH/ is probably not interpreted as
future by Klingons. In a language without tense, now has to mean
*now*, not "at that time." /DaH SIbI' vIHoH/ would express that meaning.
Translate into all possible English tenses:
chetuHmoH.
wa'leS choQaH.
matoSpu'
DaHjaj HIchDal poSmoH vay'
qagh vISoplI'
> Qov QIn vIloS..
DaH jIjangta'. :)
==
Qov - Beginners' Grammarian
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