tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue May 29 20:46:01 2001
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RE: A little Poetry
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrick Masterson [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 12:20 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: A little Poetry
>
>
> >I had a sentence corrected a while ago by charghwI' in which he told me
> >noun
> >suffixes in some sentences *are* best put on the pronoun, as in the
> >original
> >corrected sentence:
> >
> > tlhIngan mu' ghaHHey <<loDnI'>>
> > The Klingon word for "brother" is apparently <<loDnI'>>
Gee, I hope that's not how I "corrected" it.
> >Here, the pronoun <<ghaH>> does take a suffix, the apparent
> <<-Hey>>, so it
> >would seem correct that pronouns can take noun suffixes.
>
> But in that sentence, ghaH is used as a verb - he/she is.
> Wouldn't -law' be
> the proper suffix instead of -Hey?
I agree completely. Add that to really straighten out the example given
here:
tlhIngan mu' ghaHlaw' <<loDnI'>>'e'.
Don't forget the {-'e'}, unless you are working on a dialect...
> Although I'm no grammarian--far from it--it seems to me that the only
> suffixes that would make any sense on pronouns are Type 5 ones--'oHmo'
> "because of it", ghaHDaq "to him/her", SoHvo' "from you," jIHvaD
> "for me,"
> maH'e' "we (as topic)." Even if the other suffixes were grammatical, they
> would make little or no sense. 'oHDaj (his/her it) is just confusing, and
> the same thing could be said with DochDaj.
That's an interesting point. I'm not sure how totally solid it is.
Certainly, the Type 5 are the most easily productive of the suffixes that
could be used with pronouns. Hmmm.
I think of the scene in Galaxy Quest when Tim Allen has just been left
behind by the shuttle which just took off on autopilot. Those toothy aliens
have captured the captain and the science officer with the rubber head leans
out the window and yells, "It's always about YOU, isn't it!"
While that could be served as:
reH SoH'e' buSlu', qar'a'?
it might have even more striking sarcasm as:
reH SoH'a' buSlu', qar'a'?
Or consider a warrior so drunk, he sees double:
juH vIyItlaHbe'. jIleghchu'be'. SoHpu' vIleghlaH.
Or consider, "It wasn't him. It was HER who stole my money."
{HuchwIj nIHbe' ghaHvam. HuchwIj nIH ghaHvetlh!
Or consider praise for Mr. Data:
qoq'a' 'oHbej ghaHHey'e'.
But these are just toys and I'm just playing.
charghwI' 'utlh