tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Dec 15 15:52:58 1999
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RE: KLBC: wa'Hu'
-----Original Message-----
From: Andeen, Eric [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 1999 3:43 PM
To: '[email protected]'
Subject: RE: KLBC: wa'Hu'
ghel ijeyD. jatlh:
> Sooo..I take it that yesterday can be either
> one OR two words?? is that right?
>
> wa' Hu' or
> wa'Hu'
>
> ??????
Good question. <wa'Hu'> can obviously be a single word - it's in the
dictionary that way. Based on the fact that <ben>, <nem>, <waQ>, <wen>,
<Hu'>, and <leS> are all nouns, we have every reason to believe they can
also be used on their own, with or without a number in front of them. If
there is a convention for when to use a space and when not to, I do not know
what it is. I tend to put in a space whenever there's more than one number
word involved (e.g. cha'vatlh wejmaH Hut ben), but that's just my own
preference.
The other question to consider is: does this really matter? The ASCII
characters that we use for Klingon are NOT written Klingon or even a decent
romanized system of it. They are a transcription system for *spoken*
Klingon, and in most spoken languages, word boundaries are not as well
defined as they are in written form. Say <wa'Hu'>. Then say <wa' Hu'>. Do
they sound consistently, noticeably different when you say them? They don't
for me.
So to summarize: yes, both <wa'Hu'> and <wa' Hu'> are perfectly OK for
"yesterday".
pagh
Beginners' Grammarian
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http://www.bigfoot.com/~dspeers/klingon/faq.htm
As Point of interest then Can any number of spaces be inserted because, if
we are takling verbal repenstation then spaces have no meening at all.
Therefore <wa'Hu'> and <wa' Hu'> can also be <wa' Hu'>