tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 17 08:00:26 1999
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: jay' and adress
muHwI' wrote:
: jay' is used for intensifying a sentence. Can it be used in a command?
: {yItamchoH jay'} "Shut the F*** up!"
Sure, why not? Sounds good to me. Okrand didn't address the issue, but I've seen it used this way on the list and in fiction. Okrand briefly describes {jay'} in TKD (p.177):
This word not only intensifies whatever is being said, it turns
the whole phrase into an invective. Alone among the adverbials,
{jay'} always comes at the end of the sentence.
N.B. I'm told the last sentence was omitted in DOW (the German translation of TKD). And by "sentence", we've learned that Okrand generally means "clause", particularly in complex sentences formed of two or more clauses. However, invectives are usually short, single clause sentences by themselves - brief, pithy and to the point to avoid any possible misunderstanding. Canonical examples of {jay'}:
qaStaH nuq jay'
What the #$%@ is happening? (TKD & ST6)
mIch 'elpu' jay'
They've entered the @#$% sector! (TKD)
SoH 'Iv jay'!?
[Who the #$%@ are you? (untranslated)] ST6
ghaytanHa' jay'
Not bloody likely! (RT)
: If yes, where sould I put the name of whom I'm talking to?
: {targh, yItamchoH jay'} sounds okay
"Targ, shut the %$#& up!"
OK.
: what about this:
: {yItamchoH jay', targh}?
"Shut the %$#& up, targ!"
OK.
: or
: {yItamchoH targh jay'}??
Hmmm... Without punctuation, I can't tell how you're going to pronounce this imperative. In your first two examples, the "vocative" {targh} - the person/thing being addressed - is separated from the clause {yItamchoH jay'} either by a slight pause when speaking or a comma when writing. There's a bit in TKD about how to use names in the section on "Names" in "Other Types of Words" (I don't have TKD with me so I can't supply the page reference). Punctuated thusly:
*yItamchoH targh jay'!
{targh} looks as if it is the subject of {yItamchoH}, but the subject of *all* imperatives must be "you": singular or plural. Imperatives are orders you're giving to someone, in this case the targ.
: I thought of this when our neighbor's dog kept barking all day :-)
If you're yelling at the targ's owner, you would say:
targh yItammoH jay'!
"Shut that &$!% targ up!
Your last example punctuated like this:
yItamchoH targh, jay'!
yItamchoH, targh ... jay'!
"Shut up, targ ... dammit!"
with {jay'} as a sort of angry afterthought, seems okay (at least to me). In this last pattern, you might want to substitute something a bit stronger than {jay'} though, as it's almost a separate utterance. YMMV.
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons