tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 22 13:38:10 2001

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RE: quraq's proverb of the day(KLBC)


quraq said:

> ghob joq batlh suvwl' ragh DawIvpu'.
> Virture and Honor are a warriors best weapon
> 
When you connect nouns with {je} {joq} or {ghap}, the connecting word goes
last.
For example, "Coffee and tea" would be {qa'vIn Dargh je}.
So the word order you want is {ghob batlh joq}. Note that {joq} means
"and/or", so you may want to use {je} ("and") instead.

For the rest of the sentence, most of the Klingon words aren't the ones that
you want to use. {ragh} actually means to "decay", and {DawIvpu'} means "you
have chosen it". I'm guessing that you just made a mistake looking up words,
or maybe picked the wrong words when looking at another Klingon sentence.

To fix this, we can start by taking a look at what the original English
sentence is -
"Virtue and honor are a warrior's best weapon."

We already have "virtue and honor", which is {ghob batlh je}. Now, to say
that something is "virtue and honor", we can use the "to be" sentence
construction. This is described on pages 67-68 of The Klingon Dictionary,
and is used to say that one noun is another noun.

So now, we need to figure out how to say "A warrior's best weapon". {SuvwI'
nuH} means "A warrior's weapon" or "the weapon of a warrior". So how can we
say "a warrior's *best* weapon"? There isn't a single word for "best", but
we can look for something that means the same idea. I would use the verb
{nIv}, "be superior". To describe something with a verb like this, we put
the verb after the noun.
For example, {Doq} means to "be red". So "a warrior's red weapon" is {SuvwI'
nuH Doq}.
Similarly, {SuvwI' nuH nIv} means "a warrior's superior weapon".

Thus, the things we know how to say are:
{ghob batlh je} "Virtue and honor"
{SuvwI' nuH nIv} "A warrior's superior weapon"

How do we say that one is the other? Looking at page 68 of TKD, we can
follow the examples there.
If we want to say that X is Y, we would say {Y bIH X'e'}.
Since "virtue and honor" cannot use language, we use the pronoun {bIH} "they
(incapable of language)" here. If you wanted to just say "A warrior's
superior weapon is honor", then you would use {'oH} because "honor" is "it"
instead of "they".

So, filling in Y and X, we get:
{ghob batlh je bIH SuvwI' nuH nIv'e'} "A warrior's superior weapon(s) are
virtue & honor."

- taD

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