tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun May 23 08:02:16 1999
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Re: first post
Ed Heil wrote:
: As my first post to the Hol list, not having yet defined a Klingon
: personality or learned very much, may I ask the experienced listemes
: to take a look at my first Klingon sentence (below, in sig) and point
: out any mistakes I may have made?
Welcome to the list, Ed. Our Beginning Grammarian, pagh, will no doubt
respond
too, but as he's been fairly busy for the last couple of weeks I thought I
would step in. I remember how anxious I was for feedback after my first
tlhIngan Hol post.
: "QuchwIj Dayachqang'a' bang-wIj?"
: Klingon for "Want to stroke my forehead, babe?"
"Are you willing to stroke my forehead, my love?"
This is pretty good, except for the last word. {-wIj}, without the hyphen, is
used only for those items incapable of using language: i.e. things (including
animals), like foreheads. Use {-wI'} for people. Klingons are very touchy
about this and will take offence if you refer to them as a thing. Many
beginners are confused by this distinction at first; Okrand's explanation in
TKD could have been a bit clearer. In fact, if you want to keep the
colloquial
tone of "babe", omit the possessive suffix entirely:
QuchwIj Dayachqang'a', bang?
Okrand did just this in one of the Klingon sentences he provided for the
British television magazine, Radio Times:
HIchop, bang.
Give us a kiss, love. ("Bite me, love.")
Finally for the sake of completeness, a more literal translation of the
English
"do you want to ..." would be:
QuchwIj Dayach DaneH'a', bangwI'?
Do you want to stroke my forehead, my love?
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons