tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Feb 10 06:26:53 2000
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Words not in Dictionary (Was: Cannonical Klingon)
- From: Qov <[email protected]>
- Subject: Words not in Dictionary (Was: Cannonical Klingon)
- Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 06:25:57 -0800
veS joH wrote:
> ok. Im sick of seeing words on emails that i cannot find in the dictionary,
> in TKG, or in the list provided in the FAQ or where ever it is. Where
can I
> find a compleate and up to date list of ALL tlhIngan Hol words? or is it
> just a misspelling for the most part throwing me off?
> example:
> jatlh charghwI':
> DawI'pu'vam DISov'a'?
>
> I can't find a single word like this. there is Da' (corporal) (which is a
> noun so it screws up the word; thus leading me to believe that is not the
> intended word) but no Da or DawI'. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but if
the
> -wI' (type 4) is a noun suffex, shouldn't it be AFTER the pu' (type 2)? Or
> is he writing that the verb <Da> is now a noun from the <-wI'>, thus the
> appearent mixing of the types? In any case, what is Da? and where can I
> find it?
The word /Da/ can be found in the second edition of TKD (1992), in the
separately collated wordlist of the Addendum. It means "behave as, act in
the manner of."
You are correct that if Da were a noun with the noun suffixes /-pu'/ and
/-wI'/ that they would be in the wrong order. As the word is a verb, the
first suffix is the verb suffix /-wI'/. The resulting word is a noun, so
any noun suffixes may be added onto that, in the correct order.
There is no one list of all Klingon words (unless you make up your own),
but if its not in the 2nd edition of TKD, KGT nor on the new words list at
/tlh/newwords.html then your undecipherable word is
probably a typo. With experience you will learn to read through typos, heck
no one would be able to read anything by me if they couldn't.
A very common problem encountered by beginners is prefix recognition.
Given a word like /qalegh/ the beginner look it up, finds /qal/ "be
corrupt" and then looks at /egh/ and figures it's either /-'egh/ "oneself"
or /'egh/ "third note oin Klingon musical scale" and decides /qalegh/ means
something like "I corrupt myself" or "corrupt music." In truth the word is
/qa-/ "I <something> you" plus /legh/ "see" and means "I see you." The
trick to this is, if you look up the beginning of a word and it's either
not in the dictionary, or if removing what you find in the dictionary would
leave the rest of the word starting with a bare vowel, then what you have
found in the dictionary is not relevant to the word. Try looking up the
first *two* letters of the word in the verb prefix table. Never decide
that a word is a match if it isn't an exact match. Unlike English, similar
words in Klingon rarely have similar meanings.
After a while you know the prefixes and the suffixes well enough that you
just *see* the verbs and nouns inside the words.
I hope that helps.
A post of the form "why don't you people translate this into English" is
often ignored, or mocked but a post of the form, "I tried to translate this
word, but came up with this" should get quick attention. We want you to
understand. We *like* new people to talk to!