tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 20 23:08:19 2002
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Re: QoghIj 'Iw nIjmoHHey SIQpu' quchoywI'
From: "DloraH" <[email protected]>
> We do have canon of someone using 'e' to refer to someone else's previous
> sentence, in ST6 - 'e' neHbe' vavwI'
Spoken by Azetbur during her meeting with her advisors. They were talking
about attacking instead of negotiating for help with the effects of the
destruction of Praxis. I believe her exact quote is /'e' neHbe' vavoy/,
though the subtitle reads, "That wasn't what my father wanted." A good
translation: using "daddy" in the English would have seemed silly.
Notice also that the rule that /'e'/ isn't used with /neH/ is broken,
presumably because it wasn't HER sentence she was referring to, and needed
SOME kind of object in there. I suspect this is common if using /neH/ to
add to someone else's sentence.
> > > > wejmaH Soch ben ghaH neH je
> > > > She's only 37
> > >
> > > You have no verb in this sentence.
> > > bogh "born"
> > > wejmaH Soch ben bogh.
> > NUM: wejmaH Soch: thirty Soch
> > N: ben: years old
> > V: ghaH: she is
Actually it's PRO: /ghaH/. Pronouns can act like nouns or like verbs
depending on the situation, but they're not /DIpmey/ or /wotmey/, they're
/chuvmey/.
> > ADV: neH: only,
> TKD - ben "years ago". A noun, primarily for timestamps.
> I couldn't find where, but somewhere we have something about "hundred year
> old ale" wa'vatlh ben HIq.
It's in POWER KLINGON, during the discussion of how to order drinks. "I'll
have two century old ale." /cha'vatlh ben HIq vItlhutlh/.
> The english gets translated as "hundred year old
> ale" and so ben got put into KGT as "years old". I wish he didn't do
that.
> Basically this is a noun-noun. "ale of a hundred years ago", wa'vatlh ben
> HIq. "hundred year old ale" is just a smoother english translation.
> Listing ben as "years old" just adds confusion. The ale belongs to a
period
> of time a hundred years ago.
It's my opinion that adding "years old" to the definition of /ben/ was done
to include its alternate use, as in the /cha'vatlh ben HIq/ example. /ben/
is /ben/, but it's used in at least two different ways. When it appears
alone or as the final noun in a noun-noun construction, you're talking about
a moment of time however many years ago. When it appears as the first noun
in a noun-noun construction, it refers to the age of the second noun. Your
"ale of a hundred years ago" (sic) seems a good way to translate the concept
into English for illustrative purposes.
Presumably the other time words work the same as /ben/.
SuStel
Stardate 2218.0