tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 06 18:24:32 1998
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RE: (KLBC)
- From: "Andeen, Eric" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: (KLBC)
- Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 19:21:59 -0700
lab Peter:
Welcome to the list, Peter. My name is pagh, and I am the current Beginners'
Grammarian for the list. It's my job to help beginners learn Klingon.
Whenever you have a post you want help with, mark it for my attention by
putting the letters KLBC in the subject header.
> Could someone help me with klingon. I'v got the dictionary but it's a
> hassel to look every word up.
> I know a few like:SoH you,baH fire,maH us/we. How to learn Klingon?
Learning Klingon is not something you can do in an afternoon. It takes quite
a bit of study before you can read and write Klingon easily, let alone speak
it. It is just like learning Spanish or Swedish or Japanese, except that you
will never meet a native Klingon speaker, and you are not likely to find an
organized class for it.
The best way to learn is to read the GRAMMAR section of the dictionary. Then
read it again. Then read it again a few more times. You will find yourself
rereading sections at least occasionally as long as you study Klingon.
Don't worry about the words for now - they will come with time. You need to
know what to do with the words first. Klignon grammar is very different from
English grammar, and you need to know the grammar well before you can do
anything useful.
For example, very basic English sentences go : subject - verb - object, as
in "The child hit the book." Klingon sentences do this in the opposite
order: object - verb - subject. The Klingon sentence that means the same
thing is <paq qIp puq>. <paq> means "book"; <qIp> means "hit"; and <puq>
means "child".
> jIH wa'maH cha' DIS(tera')qan
> Peter,(Qel)
The usual Klingon way to say "I am X years old" is literally "I was born X
years ago." This may sound funky to English speaking people, but other
languages do things differently as well. So if you want to say, "I was born
twelve years ago", you would say:
wa'maH cha'bej jIbogh.
pagh
Beginners' Grammarian