tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jun 02 10:56:24 1998
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Re: KLBC: Q on {-meH} (was: long weekend with MO)
- From: Terrence Donnelly <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: KLBC: Q on {-meH} (was: long weekend with MO)
- Date: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 12:55:10 -0500
At 09:15 AM 6/2/98 -0700, jey'el wrote:
>First and second persons can, in English, enter into the same
>kind of construction as "the probe is difficult to hit".
>Can we say in Klingon:
>
>{SammeH bIQatlh.} You're hard to find.
>{belmoHmeH jIngeD.} I'm easy to please.
>
Well, not really. You're getting this confused with the English
idiom. "You" isn't really the subject; it's not "you" that is
hard; it's the task of finding you. "You're hard to find" ->
"To find you is hard"/{qaSammeH Qatlh Qu'}. Similarly, "I'm
easy to please" -> "It is easy to please me"/{mubelmoHmeH ngeD Qu'}.
(Or, using charghwI''s new construction: {Qatlh qaSammeH Qu'},
{ngeD mubelmoHmeH Qu'}!)
>?? I rather hope not; they look dreadful to me.
They are. 8+)
>We can recast less concisely, with "be a person":
>
>{SammeH nuv Qatlh SoH.} You're a hard person to find.
>{belmoHmeH nuv ngeD jIH.} I'm an easy person to please.
>
Same problem as above. The person isn't the subject in any case; it's
still the task that is described as hard or easy. The particular
phrase you've come up with isn't easy to translate into Klingon.
I'd first recast them as "Finding a person such as you is hard,
pleasing a person such as me is easy," but I don't feel up to the
challenge of rendering "a person such as X" in Klingon. I doubt it
can be done easily, and it really doesn't solve your confusion of subjects
problem anyway.
>I don't like this much either. It splits up the natural units
>"You're a person" and "hard to find", "I'm a person" and "easy to please".
>We could recast even more long-windedly, with a relative clause:
>
>{SammeH Qatlhbogh nuv SoH.} You're a person who's hard to find.
>{belmoHmeH ngeDbogh nuv jIH.} I'm an person who's easy to please.
>
>I like this alternative the best of these three. It's long but clear.
>
Being variations on the same confusion of subject, these don't work either.
>A different point:
>These examples are all of the form "X is Y to Z". Naturally, the main verb of
>the sentence might be something else, with this same construction used non-
>predicatively to modify a noun:
>
This is called a cleft expression. It's the way we render
Sentence As Subject in English. As such, it is always an impersonal
expression, and X can never be anything except "it". It is logically
the same as "Z = Y", and the "X" is merely a grammatical paraphrase for
the "=". We've struggled for years to approximate this in Klingon;
I think charghwI' has come up with the best form so far.
When you insert an actual subject into the "X" slot, you are deep in the
realm of English idiom. "I'm easy to please" is a cleft of a cleft, and I
don't think Klingon has any resources to follow you there.
>{jabbI'IDlIj vIlaDtaHvIS yajHa'meH ngeDbogh mu'tlhegh vItu'.}
>Reading your message, I noticed a sentence that was easy to misinterpret.
>
Recast: {jabbI'IDlIj vIlaDtaHvIS, wa' mu'tlhegh vItu'. ghaytan 'oH
yajHa'laH vay'.}
>I think this is easier to read than
>{jabbI'IDlIj vIlaDtaHvIS yajHa'meH mu'tlhegh ngeD vItu'.}
>Reading your message, I noticed an easy sentence to misinterpret.
>
>What does everyone else think?
>
-- ter'eS