RE: American cars (klbc)

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

jatlh Ed:

> DujlIj luDIjpu'DI', DujlIjvaD lulo'pu' nuq ritlh.
> when they painted your car, what color did they use ?

A couple of problems here. To start with, <nguvmoH> would be better than
<DIj> for this kind of painting. Also, the <-DI'> suffix doesn't really
connect the act of painting the car with the rest of the sentence. The
suffix <-meH> does, and it's perfect here. The <-pu'> aspect suffix doesn't
really work either.

You're trying to use <nuq> to ask "what color" or "which color", but as far
as we know it doesn't work this way. I could say <nuq DaSop?> - "What did
you eat?"; but I cannot say <nuq chab DaSop?> - "Which pie did you eat?".
<nuq> just doesn't work this way.

Instead, the best thing to do is something completely different: use an
imperative: "Identify the color". Fixing the sentence order and dropping the
redundant <DujlIjvaD>:

DujlIj nguvmoHmeH rItlh lulo'bogh yIngu'.

Also, this is the perfect place for the indefinite subject suffix <-lu'>.
Who exactly is the "they" in your English sentence? It's not important -
indefinite.

DujlIj nguvmoHmeH rItlh lo'lu'bogh yIngu'.


pagh
Beginners' Grammarian

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