tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jul 27 13:19:18 2000
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RE: KLBC: relative clauses again (and some un-relative-clause stu ff)
- From: Eric Andeen <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: KLBC: relative clauses again (and some un-relative-clause stu ff)
- Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 13:19:01 -0700
jIH:
>> Ah, yes. We actually have direction words now in Klingon:
>> <'ev>, <tIng> and <chan>. They came from a HolQeD article
>> - Volume 8, number 4. They refer to the area in a given
>> direction from the speaker (if used alone), or from the
>> noun they're attached to if used in a noun-noun
>> construction.
>>
>> <chan> is due east, <'ev> is northwestward (about 320
>> degrees on an Earth compass), and <tIng> is southwestward
>> (about 220 degrees). North would therefore be roughly
>> <tIng chan>, or maybe <tIng tIng chan>.
>>
Patrick Masterson:
> tIng chan...east of southwest...wouldn't that be south?
DopDaq qul yIchenmoH QobDI' ghu'. I looked them up to make sure I had them
right and then I confused <'ev> and <tIng> anyway.
North would be somewhere between <'ev chan> and <'ev 'ev chan>.
> And how would one say "west"? tIng 'ev chan? Southwest
> of northwest of east?
West is fairly easy - <'ev tIng> or <tIng 'ev>. That's the direction between
the two.
> (And why is this so complicated?)
As Voragh said, it's just because Klingons do it thaht way. I rather like it
- this arrangement uses the minimum number of cardinal directions (3)
required to express any vector as a nonnegative combination of the cardinal
directions.
>>> And now with the words, ret and pIq, can we do tenses
>>> in a sentence?
>>
>> ghobe'. <ret> and <pIq> are just like <leS> and <wen> and
>> the other relative time words - they set up a time context
>> for the sentence. The one difference is that they require
>> both a number and a unit rather than just a number. <cha'
>> ben> is identical to <cha' DIS ret> or <cha'maH loS jar
>> ret>.
> So they're just there to make new "ago" and "from now"
> phrases. Great...now I have to rewrite the whole sentence.
> Is there a word for "be last, most recent"? The line I
> used "ret" in began "It's been a couple of frustrating
> months but...", and I used "ret qaStaHvIS jarmey puS,
> mamogh; 'ach..." i.e. "In the past, while a few months
> occured, we were frustrated, but..." I could probably
> just drop the ret, though, couldn't I? Or just replace
> it with qen?
<qen> is good.
> (And I know the words for month and year and stuff are for
> Klingon times, not Earth, but I decided to use 'em anyway.)
ghay'cha'. I was trying to figure out what the area behind had to do with
anything the first time I read this :)
In general, there's an implicit assumption that Klingon time periods (days,
weeks, months, years) are roughly the same as their Earth equivalents. This
may well be horribly wrong, with five day weeks and seventeen month years.
In any case, if the context of the story is clearly Earth society, then the
terms will almost certainly be understood as Earth times rather than Klingon
ones.
pagh
Beginners' Grammarian