tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 04 06:35:20 1999

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Re: Noun suffixes, type 5



On Mon, 4 Jan 1999 01:08:18 -0800 (PST) [email protected] wrote:

> Recently I have seen some Klingon language users writing sentences using type
> 5 noun suffixes in such a way that I am troubled.
> 
> paqDaq lut vIlaDpu' I do not like (unless the speaker is standing on the book.
> Try paq vIlaDtaHvIS lut vIlaDpu'. 

Well, if you want to get picky about locatives, perhaps you 
should get picker about aspect. This means, "While I was reading 
the book, I had read the story." I think this is not what you 
wanted to say.

How about:

lut'e' ngaSbogh paq vIlaD.

or

lut'e' ngaSbogh paq vIlaDpu'.

> jajvamDaq tlhIngan Hol vIjatlh really
> bothers me.  Try qaStaHvIS jajvam tlhIngan Hol vIjatlh or simply DaHjaj
> tlhIngan Hol vIjatlh.  When a time stamp alone won't work, use qaStaHvIS....
> in lieu of one.

jIQochbe'chu'.
 
> SuSDaq joqtaH definitely should be SuSmo' joqtaH as already given in TKD.
> 
> I am proud of you should be SoHmo' jIHem.

More likely, it would be something like {ta'lIjmo' jIHem.} with 
perhaps some reference as to why I get to be proud because of 
YOU. Shouldn't YOU be proud because of you?

Anyway, I'd tend to lean more toward something like:

mubelmoH ta'lIj.
 
> -Daq refers to the place the action of the sentence is happening.  It is a
> physical location.  Perhaps Klingon native speakers (if there were any such
> being) do not use -Daq to refer to time or non-physical locations.  I feel
> that this is true for -vo', also.  It must relate to "propelling" the action
> away from a physical place.  Therefore, I don't like jajvamvo' wa'leSDaq
> jISuvtaH at all.

Are people actually writing this stuff or are you just making 
things up to object to? I've never seen anything like this. 
Maybe I just was bothered by some earlier part of such a post 
and deleted it before reading that far...

I'm not even sure what that was supposed to mean. It is so 
ambiguous, I'm not even going to try to cast it.
 
> Along this line of thinking, I also dislike Sor Hapvo' raS chenmoHpu' nuv.
> Chinese handles this beautifully without any prepositions (as Chinese does not
> have any prepositions at all):  raS chenmoHmeH nuv, Sor Hap lo'.

Klingon doesn't have any prepositions, either. I don't know any 
language that doesn't have prepositional concepts, however, and 
it is the use of them that defines much of the flavor of each 
language. Meanwhile, the table literally IS formed FROM wood. 
You take a tree's trunk and you remove a big chunk from it and 
make a table from these pieces that were physically removed from 
the trunk.

Much the way that we linguistically separate meat from animal, 
we separate wood from tree, as if wood were just some material 
mixed up in a lab or mined from deep underground. Meanwhile, 
Klingon has one word {Ha'DIbaH} for both animals and their 
flesh, and perhaps they remember that wooden items are formed by 
removing material from trees.

Meanwhile, I suspect a less controversial and quite functional 
casting is:

Sor Hap 'oH raS Hap'e'.

And while we consider castings:

Sorvo' raS Hap lellu'pu'.

There seems to be something decidedly Klingon about this 
imagery. If only the tree could scream...
 
> Comments-----------------------------
> 
> peHruS

charghwI' 'utlh



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