tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Oct 15 10:47:21 2001

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Re: KLBC: Help



Hello, I am DloraH, the list's Beginners' Gammarian.  Since you already know 
about the KLBC, I won't go through the intro.  But I don't recognize the name; 
are you new here?

> I want to write an Away-message for ICQ that says:
> "My first Away-message, but not my last"
> 
> away: didn't find anything. Can I use a negation of {naDev} or how do I do
> it? Is it possible to negate nouns, like "not here", by adding {-be'} or can
> that only be used for verbs?

Verb suffixes only go on verbs.  I understand your problem tho.  Just yesturday 
I wanted to negate a noun.  But its not that easy.

 
> away-message: Is it possible to say {naDevQIn} in one word, or should they
> be separate? "My away-message": {naDevQInwIj} or  {naDev QInwIj}, or none of
> them?

You should not attach words into one.
What we need to do here is re-cast the whole idea.  Pretend you're trying to 
explain what an "away-message" is to my mother, who knows nothing about ICQ.
Something like an "I am not here" message.


> Here is my attempt on translating the sentence:
> naDevQInwIj wa'DIch 'ach Qavbe'wIj

Just like verb suffixes only go on verb, noun suffixes only go on nouns.  You 
can't put -wIj on Qavbe'.


One way is:  
[jISaHbe' 'e' QIjbogh QInwIj wa'DIch 'oH QInvam'e', 'ach QInwIj Qav 'oHbe']

But this doesn't sound as nice.  Plus, a Klingon reading it would probably 
wonder why you wrote it.  He would expect something like simply [jISaHbe'], "I 
am not here".

See if you can re-cast the idea of what "away-message" means.  I'll try to come 
up with some other ideas also.


DloraH, BG


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