tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jun 15 08:35:39 1998

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Re: SuvwI'bom

On Mon, 15 Jun 1998 08:02:26 -0700 (PDT) Marc Ruehlaender 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> 
> ja' ghunchu'wI':
> > I actually have more of a problem with {Olaf 'oH pongwIj'e'} than I do
> > with the "simple form" {Olaf jIH}.  The way I think of the "to be" use
> > of pronouns, I like {pongwIj 'oH Olaf'e'} a lot better.  But I have no
> > conclusive arguments that the other way around is wrong, of course.

I find that very curious. One would presume that you think one 
of the two following English sentences is wrong. Please help me 
figure out which is wrong and why:

"My name is Will."
"Will is my name."

This is, by my feeble understanding, exactly like saying:

charghwI' 'oH pongwIj'e'.
pongwIj 'oH charghwI''e'.

Is one of these really WRONG? If so, please forgive my feeble 
memory for not remembering this and for forgetting why.

Meanwhile, if you are just using a pronoun and a noun to make a 
sentence, in Klingon, the pronoun is ALWAYS the subject, unless 
you are dealing with one of those odd locative sentences, like 
the answer to "Where is the captain?":

meHDaq ghaHtaH HoD'e'.

> I know, I know... another uninteresting grammar splitting...
> but that's the way I learn languages...
> 
> how do you determine what is the subject in Klingon?
> e.g. if I want to translate "I am the captain.", I'd say
> 
> {HoD jIH} if it answers "Who are you?" and
> 
> {jIH ghaH HoD'e'} if it answers "Who is the captain?"
> ("As for the captain, that would be me...")

Since the pronoun "I" is not third person, I could only 
translate this as:

"The captain is a viewing screen."

I see {HoD jIH} to mean, "I am the captain," in any setting, 
just as {tlhIngan maH} means "We are Klingons," in any setting.

> i.e., I choose the known thing as the subject and the unknown
> as the object. (Of course that's why {SoH 'Iv} confuses me :-)

Well, {SoH 'Iv} makes sense to me, while {'Iv SoH} looks weird, 
though apparently both are correct. As I understand it, when you 
just have one noun and one pronoun, generally speaking, the 
pronoun acts as the verb "to be" and also acts as the subject. 
"We are Klingons" as {maH} as the subject. "Who are you?" has 
{'Iv} as the subject. Apparently, it can act as the verb "to be" 
also. So, {'Iv SoH} means, "You are who?"

Well, both of these make sense in English or in Klingon, so long 
as you allow both {SoH} and {'Iv} to be pronouns with full 
rights to act as the verb "to be" as well as subject or object. 
The second word is the subject and the verb to be. The first one 
is the object.

Arrange to taste.
 
>                                            Marc Ruehlaender
>                                            aka HomDoq
>                                            [email protected]
> 

charghwI'

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