tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jan 31 08:15:07 2001

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RE: KLBC - targhmey


mara' said:

> SoH Daj Dochmey vaqchugh bang nepwIi' ghaH
> 
> Ok... I've mastered lesson one so I have to try something way beyond my
> abilities!  That was supposed to be something like
> 
> "If the beloved mocks things that interest you, he's  a liar."
> 
> 
This is a very good try; most of it is correct.  The main difficulty here is
the phrase "things that interest you". Here, you've used *{SoH Daj
Dochmey}*.

The Klingon word {Daj} actually means "be interesting", and not "interest
(someone)". If a Klingon verb is defined as "be _____", (such as "be happy",
"be bold", "be wet"), it is used to describe states of things. These
descriptive verbs cannot take objects. That is, you can say {ghung puq} "The
child is hungry", but you cannot say {vav ghung puq} "The child is hungry
the father".
So, you could say {Daj Dochmey} "Things are interesting". But to say that
they're interesting *to you*, you could rephrase it in several ways:

{SoHvaD Daj Dochmey} "Things are interesting for you"
where {SoHvaD} is the pronoun {SoH} ("you"), plus the noun suffix {-vaD}
("for, intended for").

To express the idea of "Things are interesting to you", you could also say
something like:
{Dochmey DatIv SoH} "You enjoy things"
or
{Dochmey DaSaH SoH} "You care about things"

Once you've chosen how to say "Things are interesting to you", notice that
this is actually a complete sentence. What we really want is "things that
are interesting to you". This second form is called a relative clause. To
change the complete sentence into the relative clause, we add the verb
suffix {-bogh} onto the verb. This suffix is explained further on pages
63-64 of The Klingon Dictionary.
For example,
{ghung puq} "The child is hungry"
{ghungbogh puq} "The child who is hungry"

In the same way, we can add {-bogh} to your sentence:
{SoHvaD Daj Dochmey} "Things are interesting for you"
{SoHvaD Dajbogh Dochmey} "Things that are interesting for you"

So, using this phrase in your original sentence, we get:

{SoHvaD Dajbogh Dochmey vaqchugh bang,} "If the beloved mocks things that
are interesting for you,"
{nepwI' ghaH} "he's a liar."

Note that the spelling of "liar" is {nepwI'}. This is {nep} ("lie, fib")
plus {-wI'} ("one who does").

Considering that this sentence was "way beyond your abilities", you did
well!
Qapla'

- taD

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