tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jan 06 17:50:04 2000

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RE: I need your help!

At 00:39 00-01-06 -0500, Qor wrote:
}jaj jIH (Grammer?) 

"I am the day"?
"computer screen of the day"?
"it monitors the day"?

}I found this in the addendum on the KLI website for new
}words not in the TKD. as a newbie, please translate what you {jetlh}. 

Do you mean jatlh?

}I have just begun to learn tlhIngan Hol and any help is greatly appreciated.
}I read this as "Klingon disguise his/her woman place valley (something I
}cant find in the TKD) woman be smooth  imperitive you-me smooth." Ok,
}smooth mountains? Smooth or round hills? Please forgive my nievity but I am
}new but eager to learn. Pehaps "Klingon women hide small chests with
}implants?" Gadzooks I hope not! There is way to much of this in real life!
}(Sorry, bad pun!) Aside from the facetiousness of my comments and bad
}spelling, I do wish to learn as much as I can.
}
}Now I beg you to translate for me what you mean by {tlhIngan jechDaq be' ro
}lanlu'DI', ngech 'ang be' Hab.  HIHar. } so I can learn.

Be happy to.  But I'll leave some of the work for you to do.

First, correction of a few lookups:

I'm guessing that the reason you couldn't find /'ang/ is that you looked it
up under "a."  'ang is a three letter word.  The letters are /'/, /a/, and
/ng/.  It's one of the original words from the original TKD.

There is no his/her in the sentence.

Look up /Har/ again.  It means believe.  The second sentence is the one word
command, "believe me."

Now for the first sentence:

The trick to translating a complex Klingon sentence is to relax and remember
the rules for simple Klingon sentences.  A complex Klingon sentence is
really a simple Klingon sentence with one or more simple additions.  

First, find the main verb.  There are three verbs in the first sentence:
/lan/, /'ang/, and /Hab/.  Any verb with a type-9 suffix (except -'a') is
not the main verb.  When a be-verb (like "be smooth") is after a noun, it's
probably acting as an adjective and modifying the noun.  That's what /Hab/
is doing here, to the noun /be'/, leaving /'ang/ as the main verb.  

What is the subject of the verb?  Remember that the Klingon subject goes
after the noun.  The only stuff after the noun is /be' Hab/.  Use section
4.4 in TKD to figure out what it means.  It's the subject of the verb /'ang/.

Now, what's the object of the verb?  It's /ngech/.  /ngech/ does mean
valley, but it also has an official slang meaning: "woman's cleavage."

Everything before the comma is another clause.  It's not an easy clause.
Here goes:

Everything up to and including the noun suffix -Daq is a prepositional
phrashe showing the location of the action of a following verb.  That
location is /tlhIngan jech/.  Remember that /jech/ means "costume" as well
as disguise.  

The next verb is /lan/.  What is the subject of that verb?  There is nothing
after the verb to be the subject.  Look at the suffixes on the verb.  One of
them is /-lu'/.  Examine section 4.2.5 to see if you can figure out what
that makes the subject of /lan/.

The object of /lan/ is all that's left: /be' ro/.  A noun-noun as described
in section 3.4.

Put it all together, and what do you get?  You tell me.

}{moj tlhol} (grammer?) (be real, or become real, not unreal, as most are
}want to be on tera'). Translate this as be yourself for that is the best
}thing to be.

You'd better look up those words again.
Qov 'utlh

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