tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Sep 18 22:55:51 2002
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RE: "Words, words, words"
> I am not sure if this is correct but I will give it a shot.
A journey starts with a step.
> What are you reading my Lord? Nuq joHwI' laDtaH
Watch your upper-case/lower-case letters. The system of writing that we use
doesn't capitalize the beginning of sentences or names. That first word
should be nuq.
Klingon sentence structure is Object-Verb-Subject.
Object - the thing which the action is being done to. In this case we don't
know what it is, that's why we're asking, that's why we're using nuq "what".
Let's jump forward to the subject - The thing doing the action. In this
case it is joHwI' "my lord". If you were talking to someone else, you would
refer to "my lord" as "he". In this case we know that the person saying the
sentence is talking to "my lord"; when talking to "my lord", "my lord" would
be refered to as "you".
Verb - The action. In this case it is laD "read". In klingon, we use
prefixes on the verb to tell us some information about who's doing what to
whom. In this case we already determined that the one doing the reading
would be refered to as "you". What pronoun would we use to refer to the
object. One doesn't usually read a "he" or "she"; plus if we were refering
to a person the object word here would be 'Iv "who". So the object would be
refered to as "it".
On the chart in TKD p33 we see for "you [to] it" we use Da-.
DalaD "You read it"
The -taH suffix "continuously", ... "what are you continuously reading?"
compared to "What are you reading?", sure there's a difference, but perhaps
it's not needed.
Put the sentence back together and we get nuq DalaD joHwI'
BUT...
In this case the speaker is talking to "my lord" and is addressing him as
"my lord". This is not third person usage. TKD p58 talks about direct
address.
>>>
Names may be used in direct address (that is, calling
somebody by name) at the beginning or end of the sentence.
Other words in direct address (such as qaH sir, joHwI' my
lord) are used similarly.
torgh HIghoS - Torg, come here! (HIghoS - proceed toward me!)
lu' qaH - Yes, sir!
<<<
So your sentence could be:
joHwI', nuq DalaD "My lord, what are you reading?"
KGT also has a section discussing direct addressing, pages 197-203
> Words, Words, Words. Mu'mey Mu'mey mu'mey
Again, watch the capitals.
mu'mey is correct, but note that the plural suffixes are optional.
TKD p21-22:
>>>
... the lack of a
specific suffix for plural does not always indicate that the noun
is singular. In Klingon, a noun without a plural suffix may still
refer to more than one entity.
...
Under certain circumstances, the only way to know wheth-
er the noun refers to one or more than one entity is by
context.
<<<
So /mu'/ can mean either "word" or "words".
In Hamlet, this line was translated as /mu' mu' mu'/.
DloraH, BG