tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri May 04 11:22:46 2001
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Re: tuQaHlaH'a' ?
Replies to this question included the word /qel/ "consider," but I consider
(!) the word to be somehow inappropriate. Not wrong, mind you, just not
quite right.
Allow me to suggest a somewhat radical sentence:
jajvetlh quv'e' jIHvaD bIjatlh.
The main part of the sentence is, of course, /bIjatlh/ "You speak." In
Klingon, if it's a noun and not the subject or object, it usually goes at
the beginning (and nouns indicating time tend to go ahead of everything
else). Krankor appropriately calls the function of these nouns "header."
This sentence has a verb and three headers.
/jajvetlh/ is "that day." As a time indicator, it goes in the front.
/jIHvaD/ "for me" indicates that "I" am the beneficiary of the action
("speaking").
/quv'e'/ is the key point here, and the sneaky bit. It's also the most
objectionable part of the suggestion. It indicates that "honor" is the
topic of the sentence. It's not the subject or object, so it goes in the
"header" location with the others. It's position is interchangeable with
/jIHvaD/.
A fully-detailed way to say this whole sentence might be, "I'm about to
focus on honor now: you spoke to me that day." Note that it doesn't
explicitly say that you spoke about honor, but if the topic of a sentence
about speaking is honor, it should be pretty clear what the speaker was
speaking about.
Again, this is not a denial of the possibility of using /qel/. I just don't
feel comfortable with "consider" being quite so universally applicable as
the other suggestions assumed. I can't help but imagine a bespectacled
Klingon pursing his lips thoughtfully, folding his arms, and saying "Indeed.
Interesting. Hmm. Let us consider, . . . " a very un-Klingon thing to do.
SuStel
Stardate 1340.9
P.S.: While /jIHvaD bIja'/ as you have it works for "you told me," it's a
little roundabout. The object of /ja'/ is the party being told something.
/choja'/ "you told me." With /jatlh/, on the other hand, the object is the
thing spoken (but not a quotation), and so if someone is listening he must
be indicated as a header noun with /-vaD/ "beneficiary" (e.g. /jIHvaD/ "for
me.") To further muddy the water here, one may optionally use the "prefix
trick" to "contract" the /-vaD/-bearing noun into the verb prefix (e.g.
/jIHvaD bIjatlh/ "you speak to me" may become /chojatlh/ if so desire).
----- Original Message -----
From: <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, May 04, 2001 12:28 PM
Subject: tuQaHlaH'a' ?
> I'm trying (in TKD, KGT, and NWL) to find a way to convey the idea of
> "about", as in "You spoke to me about honor that day." My thesaurus was no
> help, as I could find neither about, regarding, in respect to, or anything
> vaguely similar.
>
> jajvetlh quv <about> jIHvaD bIja'pu'.
>
> Did I miss something?
>
> juDmoS