tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Aug 24 02:24:52 1999
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Have a nice day!
- From: Carleton Copeland <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Have a nice day!
- Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 13:24:45 +-400
- Encoding: 39 TEXT
> Live long and prosper!
ja' mark:
> I've always preferred nI'jaj yInlIj 'ej bIchepjaj.
> More "verb"ish, I think.
ja' ghunchu'wI' 'utlh:
> Since the phrase in question here is stated as a command,
> I would prefer not to render it as a wish in Klingon.
ghoH voragh ghunchu'wI' je. ja':
> Is it? ... Or do you think "Have a nice day" is also an order?
> Of course it's an order. That's what an imperative statement
> *is*, grammatically speaking.
> Rubbish. This too is a wish, not an imperative. "May you..."
> is usually clipped off of such common and banal wishes in
> greeting/leave taking formulae.
If the imperative is commonly used to express good wishes in English, it
doesn't mean that the same is true of Klingon. Surely, the match between
English and Klingon moods is only approximate. If I assumed a one-to-one
correspondence between French and English subjunctives, for example, I
doubt that my translation were good English [sic]. Given that Klingon has
a special suffix for such wishes and that one would expect Klingon
imperatives to be rather forceful, I'd tend to understand *yItaH 'ej
yIcheptaH!* as *Live long and prosper (or I'll kill you!)*.
qa'ral