tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 19 15:11:30 2001
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Re: Quote(KLBC)
Yesterday RNButler wrote:
: pa' matlhuH blneh
: We want breathing room
:
: I was trying to quote Chang when he said, "We need breathing room."
A couple of hints to point you in the right direction until the BG gets around
to answering this:
1) I don't think Chang was thinking of room in sense of {pa'} "room, quarters"
(TKD), later expanded to "chamber" (KBoP) and "(any) enclosed area" (KGT), do
you? He was talking about room in the sense of open space, room to expand.
This is the danger of relying to literally on the TKD glossary. We have two
different nouns we could use instead: {logh} "(outer) space" - which is
Trekishly possible, considering Gen. Chang was in charge of the Empire's space
fleets - or more generally {yer} "domain, holdings, territory" which you may
not be aware of (Okrand revealed the word on the startrek.klingon newsgroup).
2) You'll want to rephrase your sentence as "we want room (in order) to
breathe" or, in more Klingon syntax, "(in order) to breathe, we want room".
When I was learning Klingon, I found it helped to translate the basic main
clause first ("we want room") - double check your verb prefixes! - then add on
any dependent clause(s) and modifiers afterwards ("(in order) to breathe").
BTW, there are a couple of relevant proverbs from _The Klingon Way_:
Suvbe'chugh SuvwI' tlhuHbe' SuvwI'
If a warrior does not fight, he does not breathe. TKW
(A nice comment on what Chang intends to do with his breathing room!)
mataHmeH maSachnIS
To survive, we must expand. TKW
Both of which mean, in effect, the same as John Ford's famous klingonaase
proverb: *Nal komerex, khesterex*.
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons