tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 23 22:34:35 1999

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Re: Happy belated birthday

Sorry to take this long to respond to this, but it took this 
long to get my Email and KGT in one place. peHruS, I wish you 
would actually READ KGT instead of just skimming it and coming 
to a blatantly wrong conclusion.

On Mon, 15 Feb 1999 19:05:35 -0800 (PST) [email protected] 
wrote:

> In a message dated 2/12/1999 9:03:20 AM US Mountain Standard Time,
> [email protected] writes:
> 
> << 
>  : I can wish someone a happy birthday by saying <qoSlIj Quchjaj!>. 
>  
>  This should be {Quchjaj qoSlIj} "May your birthday be happy!"  {qoS} is the
> subject and must follow the verb {Quch}.  {qoS Quch} is the noun phrase "a
> happy birthday", with {Quch} used "adjectivally".
>   >>
> 
> Here I must respectfully disagree with our Canon Master, Voragh.
> 
> This is a wish.  Therefore, it is equal to a toast.  Toasts' grammar have an
> overriding factor:  the syllable {-jaj} must be the final syllable of the
> sentence. (KGT p. 25)

Fine. Go to KGT and actually READ page 25:

"...For example, in everyday speech, the verb suffix {-jaj} 
("may") is used to express the speaker's desire *OR WISH* that 
something happen in the future, as in... {jejjaj tajlIj} ("May 
your knife be sharp"...)"

Note that Okrand explicitly uses the word "wish" and gives as an 
example "May your knife be sharp," and in giving that example he 
does NOT place the word with {-jaj} last. You made up this thing 
about wishes being "equal" to toasts and ignored the very text 
you cited.

I wish that every time you were tempted to use the word 
"therefore", you would just stop yourself. It makes people 
cringe. It sounds arrogant, and when you use it like this, it 
sounds foolish.

You don't need it.

Join the community. Use the language. Stop making silly 
pronouncements and claiming authority you have not earned yet.

You can obviously use the language. You've been doing it for 
some time now. Except for an apparent misunderstanding of proper 
use of the perfective and some word order problems here and 
there, you can speak the language pretty well.

And you'll get better if you do it more, and you WON'T do better 
if you just spend all your time writing in English about the 
language, pushing for your own personal favorite additions to 
the vocabulary, declaring things without a lot of basis, and 
generally looking for fights wherever you can find them.

Hol yIlo'choH. laHlIj yIDub. yIjeS. ghothej.

I know I'm guilty of many of the same sins, though perhaps not 
as consistently or persistently or agressively, but frankly, I'd 
like to get better and do this less. Hol vIlo' vIneH neH. jIghoH 
vIneHbe'. jIQum vIneH. laHlIj vIDub vIneH. maQaHchuqjaj!

> peHruS

charghwI' 'utlh

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