tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 22 07:57:31 1999
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Re: SIv (Re: Hello)
: >the way we recently found out that {SIv} can apparently mean "wonder if".
: >
: >-- ghunchu'wI'
:
: When and where?
: The interview in HolQeD mentions SIv, but I don't see any thing about
: "wonder if".
:
: DloraH
Not HolQeD, the startrek.klingon newsgroup (July 1997):
"All four words asked about ({tul} 'hope', {Qub} 'think', {Sov} 'know', and
{SIv} 'wonder') can be used in the construction {S 'e' V}, where S is a
sentence, {'e'} is the pronoun ('that') which refers to a previous topic
(in this case S), and V is one of the verbs listed above (as well as some
others). If the sentence (S) is {tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh} 'you speak Klingon',
it's OK to say ... {tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh 'e' vISIv} 'I wonder if you speak
Klingon'. (The fourth example is weird from an English translation point of
view, but it falls right in line in Klingon. If the English translation
matched the pattern of the other three sentences, it would be 'I wonder
that you speak Klingon'. In English, this means something like 'I'm
surprised that you speak Klingon' or 'I don't understand how it can be that
you speak Klingon', but this is not what the Klingon sentence means. The
Klingon sentence means something more like 'I am curious about whether you
speak Klingon'. The clumsiness here is the English, not the Klingon.)"
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons