tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 12 08:23:50 1998

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Re: KLBC - QInwIj Qav Soppu' De'wI' jay'!

---Burt Clawson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> KLBC - QInwIj Qav Soppu' De'wI' jay'!

pIj Daje'nIS.

> > Here are some /-lu'/ sentences to try. (There are other valid ways
to
> > translate, but use /-lu'/.)
> >
> > There are five flutes here.
> 
> vagh Dov'aghmey lutu'lu'.
You forgot the "here" - start the sentence with /naDev/

> > The faction was attacked.
> tlhach HIvlu'.
maj.

> > Kang had his beard trimmed.
> qeng rol chIplu'ta'.
maj.
 
> > Our culture is being destroyed.
> nughmaj Qaw'lu'taH.  

I was thinking /-lI'/, because destroying a culture is a process with
a definite stopping point - the end of the culture - but /-taH/ is
defensible.

> (doesn't seem quite right to me, since the culture
> can
> be destroyed or altered without destroying the society.)yIn buvmaj
> Qaw'lu'taH.

I like /nugh/ MUCH better that /yIn buv/.  The latter sounds more like
a scientific classification.  I had in mind /tIgh/ or /tIghmey/. 
Think of TKW.

> > There will be a Ferengi in the bar.
> tachDaq verengan tu'lu'.
maj.
 
> > Why doesn't this monitor get cleaned?
> qatlh jIHvam Say'moHbe'lu'?

Here I was thinking /-taH/.  I was trying to imply that the monitor
continued to not be cleaned, every time I go to use it.  (I guess I'd
better stop using correcting fluid to fix KLBCs).

> vay' chu':
> 
> bImoHchu' SoH.  vaj verengan ngaghta'bogh SoS'e' vay' Darur.
> "You are perfectly ugly.  Thus, you resemble someone whose mother has
> mated with a Ferengi."

Hmm.  A noun-noun with a relative clause acting as N1 doesn't seem
unreasonable, but this one doesn't work for me.  Here's why:
What does /SoS vay' Darur/ mean?  "You resemble a mother's
something/one."  "You resemble the something/someone of a mother." 
It's not completely certain you are referring to a child.  You've lost
the possessive directed towards "mother" in the translation.  We don't
know a Klingon relative clause marker that forms a possessive the was
"whose" does. (*) If the bare noun-noun isn't readily understandable,
good luck when the noun is in a relative clause!  If you change /vay'/
to /puq/, /puqloD/ or /puqbe'/, then I can read the sentence.

Dalaj'a'? 

* Gee, English is really crawling with relative clause markers.  It's
worse than Esperanto.
==

Qov - Beginners' Grammarian

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