tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 19 17:34:32 2004

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: KLBC: "while they tried to escape"

Captain Krankor ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

D00d, a private little email off the list:

While the answer you were given (repeat the verb) is a perfectly fine,
legal, functional answer, let me just say this, off the record.

The *true* answer is:  you just say 'e' lunIDtaHvIS anyway.  The rule about
type 7 verb suffixes on 'e' verbs is probably the most widely ignored rule
in all of Klingon.  The problems it creates are *numerous*, in a way that
suggests that Okrand really didn't think out the ramifications of it.  I
routinely ignore it.  Or more accurately, I try to take a very loose
interpretation that says, basically, that when the aspect of the 'e' verb
would be the *same* as the leading verb, you don't put the aspect suffix
on the 'e' verb.

Now, yes, *technically*, doing so is ungrammatical.  But NOBODY is going to
call you on it.  Still, a BG can't get up on the list and formally advise
a KLBC poster to break the rules, so the response you got on the list was
totally appropriate.

The main canon I would cite to support my position is simply the spirit of
the text on KGT p.168.  I would regard 'e' lunIDtaHvIS as "acceptable
deviation" or "mild infraction".  I see it as akin to splitting infinitives
in English.

So if you want to be absolutely, positively, unassailably correct, do the
verb twice.  But otherwise, don't worry about it.

                --Qanqor, pabpo' wa'DIch

Back to archive top level