tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 09 10:35:50 2002
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Re: "Floreat Majestas"
- From: [email protected]
- Subject: Re: "Floreat Majestas"
- Date: Thu, 9 May 2002 14:35:37 GMT
Everything everyone has said about this is correct. I'm just adding a point of
clarification. {chep}, like all adjectival verbs, can follow a noun to act like
an adjective. If you use it as a verb, "prosper" is probably a better
translation than "be prosperous". Meanwhile, if Okrand only defined it
as "prosper", we would not expect to be able to use it adjectivally.
The crux of this is that prosperity is a state, not an action. In English, most
stative verbs are "be adjective". If I say, "I cold" or "I rich", or "I tall",
you'd probably figure out what I meant. English arbitrarily requires the copula
to make these adjectives act like the stative verbs they easily could be.
English simply did a better job of "prosper" than it does of these other
stative verbs.
Meanwhile, I personally suspect that this same effect may be applicable to
verbs we thusfar do not treat this way, like {ba'} {meQ} {Qam} {Qom}. They are
stative in meaning.
Will
> On Wed, May 08, 2002 at 09:26:58PM +0100, qe'San (temp ADSL email) wrote:
> > I have a question re prosper.. in TKD it's listed as
> > chep - prosper, be prosperous (v)
> > is it "(to) prosper" + "be prosperous" or just the latter.
> The two comma-separated translations are independent - each by
> itself is a translation of the Klingon. More than one is given
> solely to clarify the meaning, since there's frequently not a
> one-to-one match where the exact set of ideas encompassed by the
> Klingon word is also encompassed by a single English one.
>
> In this case I personally don't see any difference between the two
> English glosses; "I prosper", "I am prosperous" - two different
> ways of saying the same thing. They are probably both given because
> of the way Klingon treats "adjectives".
>
> Normally, what English expresses with "to be" plus an adjective,
> Klingon expresses with a bare verb. For instance, we have an
> adjective "green", but Klingon instead has the verb "SuD" which means
> "to be green".
>
> It just so happens that in the case of the adjective "prosperous", English
> also has a form that follows the Klingon model - the verb "to prosper".
> So the Klingon verb can be translated into English either way, and both
> forms are listed in the dictionary.
>
> Regardless, however, of whether you choose to express the concept in
> English as "I prosper" or "I am prosperous", the Klingon is the
> same: "jIchep".
>
> --
> marqoS <[email protected]>
>