tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jun 19 10:55:07 2000
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RE: [Fwd: martok groet..]
jatlh K'meQ:
> I've curtailed this message somewhat and left the
> klingon that's to be checked...
maj.
Keep in mind that my corrections here are always intended to make your post
grammatically correct. It's entirely possible you're being poetic and don't
want to be strictly correct, but that is up to you.
> Richard Stellaard wrote:
>
>> tlIngan maH
>> 'Iwmaj batlhvaD
>> yInmaj wo'vaD
>> matlhmaj Qangmo'
>> pIvan martaq Sa'
>
> It's supposed to mean
>
>> We are Klingon
>> Our blood for honor
>> Our lives for the empire
>> Our loyalty to the chancellor
>> we salute you general Martok
The first line is obviously good, and the last line is good as well,
although it could use a comma after the <pIvan>.
The middle lines are a bit of a problem. You've got three sentence
fragments, each with a regular noun followed by a noun with a type five
suffix. These just don't work. <'Iwmaj batlhvaD> means "For the honor of our
blood", of "for our honor's blood". Likewise for the rest. The problem is
that the only way to interpret these is the noun-noun construction, so the
second noun posesseses the first, which is not what you want.
If you turn them around, as in <batlhvaD 'Iwmaj>, then things get even
worse. You can't put a type five suffix on the first noun in a noun-noun
construction (for a whole lot of reasons; see recent discussion about this
on the list). So they don't really make (grammatical) sense at all, even as
sentence fragments. What you need is a verb to put them together.
Here's my suggestion. It may be a bit looser than you would like, but it
should give you an idea on how to proceed:
batlhvaD maregh - We bleed for honor!
wo'vaD maHegh - We die for the Empire!
QangvaD mamatlh - We are loyal to the Chancellor.
> Is this correct (It's a product of my artistic
> supervisor, Kral)
>
> If not, please tell me and him (martah <at> casema
> <dot> net) what has to be changed.
pagh
Beginners' Grammarian