tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Feb 21 03:35:01 2001

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RE: Quote(KLBC)


> RNButler wrote:
> : pa' matlhuH blneh
> : We want breathing room
> : 
> : I was trying to quote Chang when he said, "We need breathing room."
> 
Voragh replied:

> 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's comments here are good, as usual. As he suggested, I'd probably
rephrase the sentence as "We want room (space, territory, etc.) in order for
us to breathe." Normally, I would suggest using {Sach} ("expand") instead of
{tlhuH} ("breathe"). When Chang said "breathing room", he really meant that
he wanted space so that the empire can expand (and contract, and move
around, etc.).
However, I believe that in Star Trek 6, they actually *did* want "breathing
room", because the atmosphere of the Klingon homeworld would be gone in 50
years. So, depending on whether you want to say that they want to expand, or
to breathe, you could use {Sach} or {tlhuH}.

For the grammar of your original sentence:

> pa' matlhuH blneh
> 
You can say "a room in order that we breathe" by using the verb suffix
{-meH} ("in order to, for the purpose of").
The verb+{meH} can go before the noun so that it modifies the noun. For
example,
{matlhuHmeH pa'} "A room for us to breathe", or you could read it as "An
in-order-that-we-breathe room"

However, as Voragh mentioned, you probably don't want to use the word {pa'}
for your sentence.

Also, since you're saying "we want a room...", the verb prefix to use in
this case is {wI-} ("we - it").

So your original sentence would be
{matlhuHmeH pa' wIneH}
But it would mean "We want a room so that we can breathe", which isn't what
the original quote really means.

Qapla'

- taD

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