tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Mar 18 10:18:37 2001

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Re: KLBC: Comic Relief



lab Robert:

> tuQaHta'.
>
> *Comic Relief QaHmeH Soj mangev. loSmaH *pounds mapep. chepHa'ghach
> matungpu' jay'.

Robert, I'm a former BG, not the current BG, so I shouldn't really be
touching your grammar, but I seem to be the only one in on weekends and I
have a general suggestion.  

Your understanding of Klingon grammar is quite strong.  Your word order is
good, and you're using affixes and relative clauses correctly.  Your
greatest weakness is selecting words with appropriate meanings.  

In English, many words have multiple meanings.  The same is true in
Klingon, but they won't be the SAME multiple meanings.  You ran into this
first with "pants".  You did recognize that Marc Okrand was American, and
thus that yopwaH  means trousers not your meaning of pants, but you didn't
account for the expression "pants", meaning "fie" or "nuts", not
translating into Klingon.  Another example (from above) "raise."  The
primary meaning of raise refers to physically making something higher in
elevation.  In English we also talk about raising children, raising money,
raising our voices, and raising awareness, but those aren't the primary
meanings and in most other languages that word that you use to talk about
raising a sword is not the same word that you use for the other meanings.
In Klingon, for example, he was raising a child could be puq nenmoHlI';
raise my voice - ghoghwIj vIHoSchoHmoH; we raise their awareness -
DISovqu'choHmoH.  

When you write a sentence in English and then try to translate it into
English,  try not to think of each word, but rather each concept, and then
seek Klingon words that match that concept.  This is the same for all
foreign languages.  

Yes, there is sometimes ambiguity as to what IS the primary meaning of a
word in the dictionary.  Sometimes we have seen it used in canon (i.e. by
Marc Okrand) and sometimes there is a scope note as is the case with "Da' -
corporal (rank)".  (The other meanings of English corporal would have to be
expressed with <porgh> and perhaps something like <lalDan Sev'a'>).
Sometimes we can only guess, guided by what vocabulary the Klingons in the
television series and movies used, because it is clear that MO used that as
a guide when choosing vocabulary.

This is a bit long, and I know when I was a BG some people took the length
of my reply to be an indication of how many mistakes they made.  It isn't
and never was.  If it's a measure of anything other than how much I babble,
it shows how interesting I thought the point of grammar was, or how
important it as for me to explain it completely.  It will make a huge
positive difference in the quality your Klingon if you simply catch
yourself when you use a Klingon word whose translation matches the English
word, and replace it with one whose MEANING matches.


Qov


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