tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Nov 28 22:38:47 1998

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Re: opera: blind

lab muHwI':

>><leghchoHlaHbe'> *does* mean "he begins/changes to be unable to see"

> Could I make use of {-choH} to give the notion of the will-future?
> {jachchoH Ha'DIbaHmey} "the animals will cry" ??

Klingon does not have tense. If you want to make sure everyone knows that
something is happening in the future, then say so. <wa'leS jach
Ha'DIbaHmey> - tomorrow the animals will scream. <tugh jach Ha'DIbaHmey> -
the animals will scream soon. If the context of the whole paragraph or story
or whatever is in the future, all you have to do is establish when it is
happening at the beginning, and the rest flows from there.

<jachchoH Ha'DIbaHmey> means "the animals are beginning to scream" in
whatever moment the action of the sentence is taking place. If we know
beforehand it all happened ten thousand years ago, then it is "the animals
began to scream". If we know it will happen tomorrow, then it is "the
animals will begin to scream". If you dont't have any context, you can
assume it is  happening now, and translate it as present tense.

Note, though, that this whole discussion is going on because everyone on
this list speaks a native language which has tense, so we can't really think
about things in our own language without putting them in the proper tense.
Klingon doesn't have tense, and fluent speakers of Klingon don't even notice
the distinction. To them, it's all just <jach Ha'DIbaHmey>.

Also, a vocab note. <jach> is "scream, cry out", and <SaQ> is "cry".


pagh
Beginners' Grammarian

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