tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Aug 04 15:56:27 2001

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KLBC: RE: tlhIngan HolDaq jabbI'IDwIj wa'DIch

I was going to leave the grammatical corrections up to taD, our BG, then
remembered that he's off for a week... Okay. Part of this was addressed to
me, so I'll just go full bore on the response. This is not originally
labeled KLBC, but I believe that it has exactly the kind of minor, common
beginner errors in it that should be of interest to beginners, so more
people can learn from it.

First, I really appreciate your effort to write completely in Klingon and
applaud it. potlhqu'! We need more similar efforts. Please don't be
embarrassed by the corrections. I'm really impressed that your skill with
the language is so advanced in some areas, while still very unpracticed with
certain basics, like verb prefixes. Practice is exactly what you need.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rohan Fenwick [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2001 12:16 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: tlhIngan HolDaq jabbI'IDwIj wa'DIch
>
>
> jabbI'IDvam 'oH jabbI'IDwIj naQ wa'DIch tlhIngan HolDaq.

Let's begin with:

jabbI'IDvam 'oH jabbI'IDwIj naQ wa'DIch...

This is correct, except that you forgot that when you use a pronoun ('oH) as
the verb "to be" and there is an explicit subject (jabbI'IDwIj naQ wa'DIch),
you need the noun suffix {-'e'} added to the subject. In this case, for a
beginner, the exact placement of that {-'e'} is a little challenging. It
doesn't go on {jabbI'ID} because that is followed by the adjective{naQ}.
When that happens, Type 5 noun suffixes like {-'e'} (and ONLY Type *5* noun
suffixes) move to the adjectival verb.

jabbI'IDvam 'oH jabbI'IDwIj naQ'e' wa'DIch...

Some would argue that it might even move to {wa'DIch}, but Okrand has simply
never discussed whether or not the rule that moves a Type 5 noun suffix to a
verb used adjectivally also applies to ordinal numbers ("first, second", or
any Klingon number followed by {-DIch}). These numbers follow the nouns they
modify, like verbs do when they are being used as adjectives, but that
grammatical fact likely doesn't tell us anything about whether the Type 5
noun suffix behaves the same for these two classes of words that both follow
and modify nouns. [We need to ask Okrand about this.] My vote is to put
{-'e'} on {naQ} and not on {wa'DIch}.

The reason I vote for this is that sometimes a verb like {naQ} can be a verb
(when its subject follows it) and sometimes it can be an adjective (when the
noun it modifies preceeds it). In larger, more complex sentences, it can be
confusing whether the verb is being used as a verb or as an adjective.
Moving the Type 5 noun suffix to the verb makes this simple. It becomes
obvious that a verb with a noun suffix on it is being used as an adjective.

As an example:

bangwI'vaD potlh tIqwIj 'oy'.

Because of this rule, we know that this means, "My heart's pain is important
to my love."

Without this rule, this sentence could mean what we would now write as:

bangwI' potlhvaD tIqwIj 'oy'.

"It hurt my heart for my important love."

Having the rule that makes the Type 5 noun suffix {-vaD} move to the
adjective often makes the meaning clearer.

Meanwhile ordinal numbers always follow the noun they modify, so this is
never an issue and moving the Type 5 noun suffix to an ordinal number
doesn't clarify anything in any circumstance. Keep in mind that if Okrand
thinks otherwise, my opinion is meaningless.

I'm also going to suggest changing the subject and object of your Klingon
message to match that in your likely English intent. To my ear, "My first
entire message is this message in Klingon," doesn't sound as good as "This
message is my first entire message in Klingon." This, of course, renders
useless everything I just said about where to put {-'e'}. Oh well. Maybe it
will still be useful.

Now, I have two problems with {... tlhIngan HolDaq}. First is that a noun
with {-Daq} always goes at the beginning of a sentence. In English, we can
move words around a lot as a matter of style. English is so packed with
"helper words" that word order is much less important most of the time.
Klingon is sparce in verbage, so word order is typically much more strict
than in English. Basically, except for the suffix {-'e'} which can go on any
noun anywhere, any Klingon noun with a Type 5 suffix on it belongs at the
beginning of a sentence.

Maybe someday we'll see examples from Okrand that give us exceptions to this
rule, but from everything we've seen and from the descriptions in TKD, if a
noun has a Type 5 noun suffix on it, it belongs before the direct object in
the sentence.

Now, having given you the reminder of that basic grammatical rule, the next
point is that {-Daq} really refers to a position in space. It does not have
the same kind of abstract concept function that the word "in" has in
English. {tlhIngan Hol} does not have a physical location, so {tlhIngan
HolDaq} is not a meaningful phrase.

A good substitution to convey the meaning you want would be {tlhIngan Hol
vIlo'taHvIS}. A dependent clause like this is one of those few examples in
Klingon where word order is optional. Both of these versions of your
sentence are equally valid:

tlhIngan Hol vIlo'taHvIS jabbI'IDwIj naQ wa'DIch 'oH jabbI'IDvam'e'.

jabbI'IDwIj naQ wa'DIch 'oH jabbI'IDvam'e' tlhIngan Hol vIlo'taHvIS.

> QIt tlhIngan Hol jIghojtaH, vaj tlhIngan Hol jIghItlhchu'be', 'ej vaj
> tlhIngan Hol jIghItlhpu'be'. 'ach DaH vIchoH. ('ej mu'mey
> <<tlhIngan Hol>>
> vIjatlhqa'be' :)

With the single, consistent error of using {jI-} when you needed {vI-},
everything you wrote here before the parenthesis is written perfectly and
clearly. I think your parenthetical comment is also correct, though I'm a
little shaky on the use of {jatlh} with a quotation as its direct object.
Using the word {mu'mey} as you did probably makes it right, since the direct
object of {jatlh} can be "a unit of speech, like a speech or an address or a
language", so it can probably be {mu'mey} with the direct quote being a sort
of apposition (if that's legal).

If you had not used the word {mu'mey}, then the direct quote becomes
grammatically independent of the verb {jatlh} and is not its direct object,
so that would be said as {'ej jIjatlhqa'be' <<tlhIngan Hol>>}. You can avoid
this controversy by using the verb {lo'} instead of {jatlh}.

Hmmm. One minor comment: {vaj} is an adverb, not a conjunction. The comma
before it should be a period, or you need another conjunction before {vaj}.
You did this more correctly the second time you used {vaj}, then you started
the parenthetical sentence with a conjunction...

Thus, making all these little corrections, we get:

QIt tlhIngan Hol vIghojtaH. vaj tlhIngan Hol vIghItlhchu'be', 'ej vaj
tlhIngan Hol vIghItlhpu'be', 'ach DaH jIchoH ('ej mu'mey <<tlhIngan Hol>>
vIlo'qa'be').

> chay' "artificial language" vIjatlhlaH? <<chenmoHpu' Hol>> vIQub, 'ach
> jISovbe'.

Here, you really are using a direct quotation as if it were the direct
object of {jatlh}. While that makes sense in English, it is not how Klingon
works. Direct quotation is a special grammatical case. That first sentence
could be correctly written one of two ways:

chay' jIjatlhlaH "artificial language"?

"artificial language" chay' jIjatlhlaH?

I know it looks weird. Reread the chapter in TKD on quotations to get a
stronger sense of it.

Meanwhile, the way I would say "artificial language" based upon how I
understand the term would be:

Hol'e' chenmoHta'bogh wa' nuv neH.

Literally, that means "a language which only one person created". An
alternative perhaps clearer:

nIteb Hol'e' chenmoHta'bogh wa' nuv.

"a language which one person, acting alone, created".

As you stated it, the language is doing the creating. Your version would be
better stated as {Hol chenmoHlu'pu'bogh} meaning "a language which has been
created", but then ALL languages have been created.

Some might argue that the best term would be {Holqoq}, since {-qoq} is used
to indicate that something is not "real", though it seems that there is
usually a negative connotation to the use of {-qoq} that artificial language
probably doesn't deserve.

> wen, mu' charghwI' jabbI'IDDaq 'oH "realis".

Don't forget your {-'e'}. mu' vIlo'pu'bogh 'oH "irrealis"'e'.

> "Linguist" SoH, charghwI'?

ghobe', 'ach naDev HolQeDpu' law' tu'lu'. mughojmoH chaH. reH jIghojtaH
vIneH.

> law' paqmeyDaq jInejpu', 'a "realis" vInejbe'. "Realis" 'oH nuq?

Don't forget your {-'e'}.

jIQIjqa': "irrealis" 'oH mu''e' vIlo'pu'bogh.

> Qapla' 'ej Satlho'

qaQaHchugh jIbel.

> ro'Han

charghwI' 'utlh

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