RE: toH

["Andeen, Eric" <Eric.Andeen@Sequencia.com>]

Welcome to the list, qultoQ. My name is pagh, and I am the current
Beginners' Grammarian. It's my job to help beginners' learn Klingon.
Whenever you have a post you want help with, mark it for my attention with a
KLBC in the subject line.

jatlh qultoQ:

> nuqneH,

nuq DaneH SoH? Although <nuqneH> is listed as *the* Klingon greeting, that
doesn't mean that's how you start a conversation. <nuqneH> basically means
"what do you want?", and should be used that way. It's a fine way to respond
to someone walking up to you or calling you on the telephone. It's not so
good to walk up to someone yourself and say <nuqneH>. Think about it.

> majSaqIH!

Wow - you've taken a very good sentence and squished something on the
beginning of it that doesn't really make sense. <SaqIH> is fine - "I meet
you (plural)" (or "I meet y'all" in the southern US). The <maj> part looks
like it's going for something like "Good to meet you.", but it doesn't work
that way. <maj> is an exclamation, so it goes all by itself in a sentence.
It can't, as far as we know, be used any other way.

I should also point out that this sort of phrase is just not something a
Klingon would say. It is a pleasantry we humans use almost every single time
we meet someone else, and as a result, it has no real meaning.

> qultoQ jIH;
> wej tlhIngan vIjatlh;

Unlike many terrestrial languages, the name of a country or group cannot be
used all by itself as the name of a language. You have to say <tlhIngan Hol>
- "the Klingon langauge", and not just <tlhIngan>.

And I would say you *are* speaking (well, writing at least) Klingon. It's
not perfect, but I did get the gist of what you said.

> SuwamQuch,

Another case of squishing stuff together that doesn't make sense. Let me
suggest an alternative:

Suwamchu'jaj! 

<-chu'> and <-jaj> are both suffixes, and <-jaj> is found in the appendix.


pagh
Beginners' Grammarian

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