tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 29 13:23:53 1999
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RE: HolQeD and KLBC
- From: "Andeen, Eric" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: HolQeD and KLBC
- Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 13:25:04 -0700
jatlh malqa:
>>>>>
I have received my first copy of this issue. Rather nice but I still don't
understand the Beginners stuff.
And one of the things I totally don't understand from TKD is the table in
4.1.1 Verb prefixes. I just can't make heads nor tails of the table. Is
there someone who could put this in another form for me to understand.
Without it , I know I will never understand how to form or translate
sentences.
>>>>>
The prefix table is probably the single most intimidating thing about
Klingon when you first get hold of it, but it's actually pretty simple.
Every verb in Klingon has to have an appropriate prefix based on its subject
and object. The subject is the noun that does the action of the verb, and in
a Klingon sentence it goes after the verb. The object is the thing to which
the action is done, and it goes before the verb.
The way you use the prefix table is to figure out the what kind of subject
and object the sentence has and then go look up the appropriate prefix. If
there's no object (as in "I am hungry"), use the "none" column. If your
English sentence is, for example, "I ate the pies", the subject is "I", and
the object is "the pies", which is a "them". Looking that up in the table,
the appropriate prefix is <vI->, for <chabmey vISop>. For "Maltz hit you",
the subject is "Maltz", who is a "he", and the object is "you", which in
this case is almost certainly singular. The prefix is <Du->: <DuqIp matlh>.
Now you try a few:
We see the ship
Y'all found me
The phasers destroyed the door
You are clean
Similarly, when you get hold of a Klingon sentence, you can use the verb
prefix to figure out what the subject and object are. For example, in <yaS
vIqIp>, <yaS> is clearly the object since it comes before the verb. There's
no noun present for the subject, but the prefix tells us that the subject is
"I". So this means "I hit the officer". <pIlegh> has a subject of "we" and
an object of "you" (singular), so it means "We see you". Your turn:
reSuv
nulegh tlhInganpu'
SuDal
Duj boQaw'
pagh
Beginners' Grammarian
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