tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed May 17 15:02:59 2000

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Re: chay Doch Do maghmeH tlhIngan Hol lo'lu'?



tuv'el:
> "How does one use the Klingon language to indicate an object's velocity?"
> For example:
>   "The ship is approaching us at 300 kellicams per second."
>   nughoS Duj. qaStaHvIS wa' lup, wejvatlh qelI'qammey 'oH Do'e'.
> Is that right?  Is there a better way?

De'vID:
: How about /nughoS Duj, qaS wa' lup, wejvatlh qelI'qam leng/?

Try {Hoch lup} "each/every second" as a time stamp and using {-bogh} to
collapse the two clauses into one:

  Hoch lup 300 qelI'qam leng nughoSbogh Duj. 
  "Each second the ship approaching us travels 300 kellicams." 

Hmm... I wonder if you could adjust this to indicate acceleration:

  Hoch lup latlh 300 qelI'qam leng nughoSbogh Duj. 
  The approaching ship is accelerating at 300 kellicams per second per second.
  ("Each second the ship approaching us travels an additional 300 kellicams.") 
 
Is that right?  We also have a verb {chung} "accelerate".

: The reason that I replaced the /'oH/ is, what does it stand for in
: the above?  It doesn't stand for /wejvatlh qelI'qammey/, because
: the velocity is 300 k *per second*, not just 300 k.  qar'a'?

I'm not sure I understand the question.  In tuv'el's example the
pronoun-as-verb {'oH} refers to {Do}, the subject of the 2nd sentence: 

  qaStaHvIS wa' lup, wejvatlh qelI'qammey 'oH Do'e'.
  "During one second, the velocity is 300 kellicams." 
 
: I also think you can use /qaS/ rather than /qaStaHvIS/, and it'd
: still be understood.  I think this is the sort of thing you'd
: want to say quickly, especially in the heat of battle.

I would just drop {qaS}/{qaStaHvIS} altogether, unless you want to specify that
the ship travels 200 k.p.s. "while 1 second occurs, during 1 second, etc." for
some reason (say, you're correcting someone else's inaccurate or insufficiently
precise statement).
 
: Of course, there is probably a specialized way of dealing
: with velocities that Okrand/Maltz hasn't revealed yet.

No doubt.  Here is what little canon I know relating to speeds:

  qughDo motlh: pIvlob vagh
  Normal Cruising Speed - Warp 5 (BoP)

  'aqroS qughDo: pIvlob Hut vI' vagh
  Maximum Cruising Speed - Warp 9.5 (BoP)

  nom yIghoSqu'!
  Maximum speed. (ST5)

  cha'maH vagh vatlhvI' Hong. QIt yIghoS. [punctuation uncertain]
  slow to one quarter impulse power (ST5)
  ("Twenty five percent impulse-power. Proceed slowly.")

You can follow Okrand's lead when he decided to use a percentage here, neatly
avoiding having to figure out Klingon fractions.  All you have to do is convert
300 kellicams/second into the standard Klingon impulse power scale.  (Good
luck!)

: Um, does /magh/ "betray" mean also to "indicate"?  I think it's one of
: the meanings of "betray" in English, but does it have that meaning
: in Klingon?

Apparently.  {magh} "indicate, reveal" was listed as a featured word a few
years ago - I haven't checked recently - in the Klingon Language Studies Area
of the official Paramount-sponsored fan site Star Trek: Continuum
(www.startrek.com), though Okrand has never used it in a sentence.  Some are
suspicious of this word; it's possible that this may have been a typo for
{'agh} "show, demonstrate, display" which was used by Okrand in SkyBox Card S33
and later published in KGT.

If you don't like {magh}, other synonyms include {cha'} "show, display
(picture)", {nargh} "appear" (TKW) and {'ang} "show, reveal".



-- 
Voragh                       
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons


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