tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Aug 31 16:58:11 2001
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Re: Iw
(taghwI' pabwI' ghajtaH ghom?)
On Sat, Sep 01, 2001 at 04:28:49AM +0800, jeremy mudge wrote:
> tlhIngan maH!
>
> i was looking for the word for "bloodless" but didn't find it. And I was hoping that "Iwbe'" or ("Iwbe") would do.
> I will be grateful to anyone who can help me.
>
"'Iwbe'" is a good thought (note that it's 'Iw, not Iw; the
apostrophe is a full-fledged letter in Klingon, as important as the I
or w in the spelling and pronunciation of the word). Unfortunately,
it translates as "doesn't blood", which makes about as much sense
in Klingon as in English.
The problem is that 'Iw is a noun, not an adjective or verb. In English the
-less suffix turns a noun X into an adjective meaning "characterized by not
having any X", but there is no equivalent noun suffix in Klingon.
However, you can translate the expanded phrase implied by the English
suffix: <<'Iw ghajbe'bogh>> means "which does not have blood". So you
could say something like this:
'Iw ghajbe'bogh SuvwI''e' The bloodless warrior (literally,
"The warrior which has no blood")
[SuvwI' "warrior"]
You need to tack on that -'e' to whatever you're talking about; otherwise
the sentence could just as easily be referring to the blood instead of the
warrior (in which case it would be translated as "the blood which the warrior
doesn't have").
> yemej
-marqoS