tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Oct 01 15:33:26 2000
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RE: KLBC Did I do it right?
- From: "Stauffer, Tad E (staufte7)" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: KLBC Did I do it right?
- Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 18:31:59 -0400
gheHpu' said
> At startrek.com they have a colom were you can ask "the klingon
> ambasiter to earth" questions. I said "tlhIngon Hol bIjatlh'a'" I
> intended to say do you speek klingon or do you speak the klingon
> languge. Is that the right way to say that.
>
There's a minor spelling mistake - the Klingon word for "klingon" is
{tlhIngan}, with an {a} at the end.
Also, there's a problem with the verb prefix {bI-} here. If you look on the
chart at the top of page 33 of TKD, you'll find the verb prefixes. The
prefixes tell you who is doing the action in a sentence (i.e., the subject
of the verb), and they also tell who is receiving the action (i.e., the
object of the verb).
In the sentence "Do you speak Klingon?", the person doing the action is
"you". The person/thing that is being acted on is "the Klingon language", or
"it".
So to find the correct prefix, you would look on the chart where it has
"you" as the subject, and "him/her/it" as the object. So the prefix you want
in this case is {Da-}:
{tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh'a'?} "Do you speak Klingon?"
If the Klingon ambassador already knew you were talking about the Klingon
language, you could just say:
{Dajatlh'a'?} "Do you speak it?"
What if you use the prefix {bI-} instead, like you did before? If you look
on the chart, you will find that {bI-} indicates "you" is the subject, but
the object is listed as "none". In other words, the object is not known or
there isn't one. So {bIjatlh'a'?} would mean "Do you speak?"
> gheH'pu
>
You said before that you wanted the name {gheHpu'}, so just make sure you
spell it consistently. :-) Remember that the {'} is just as important as the
other letters in a Klingon word.
- taD