tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Dec 05 13:35:13 2004

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-ghach-'a'! :)

...Paul ([email protected]) [KLI Member]



On Mon, 6 Dec 2004, QeS lagh wrote:
> The way I understand {-ghach}, it would only work in this case if
> "subscription" meant the act of subscribing, rather than an actual
> membership (which the site seems to be asking for). IMO, it would be
> impossible to buy a {muvta'ghach}; you could only {muv}, and the act of
> {muv}ing is the {muvta'ghach}. That may involve transfer of money, but
> that's part of the {muvta'ghach}: the action of joining. Once you're
> subscribed, you don't have a {muvta'ghach} any more. That's the way I see
> it: in the verb-focused grammar of Klingon, {-ghach} refers to an action (in
> this case, subscribing), not to any result of the action (the subscription
> or membership).

Ah, but remember /-ta'/ is the suffix that says the action was completed.
Not saying this validates the expression at all, but /muvta'/ if you look
at /muvta'/ as "joined (intentionally)", adding /-ghach/ should create a
noun which is the attribute of having joined, or describes the state of
something which has joined.  Once a person has joined, they will always
have been joined (arguably, even if they then unjoined, they will still
always have joined at some point in time).

If */muvghach/ was legal, I might translate that into "the joining", like
"the joining of the group".  But I think with the suffix, /muvta'ghach/
more refers to "the state of having joined", which seems inline with the
concept of a "subscription".

It ain't perfect, but I doubt we'd really get perfection in this case.  I
wonder if we could convince the next friend of Maltz to ask for a bevvy of
internet service concept words like "subscribe", "log in", "log out",
maybe some idea of how menu items should be terms (commands? /-meH/
clauses? etc)....

> Another two cents' worth: I like ter'eS's idea of using {-meH} verbs.
> They're short and to the point. My only issue would be whether it's possible
> to use a {-meH} clause on its own - the rest of the sentence would, I guess,
> have to be tacitly supplied by context. Failing that, imperatives could work
> too: {QonoSvam yIbejchoH} "start watching this journal!"

I switched a lot of the subscribes to using /bej/.  Doesn't look like the
latest content push has been done yet, maybe today or tomorrow...  I did a
bunch of translating last Friday afternoon, tried to get everything on the
front page translated, at the least.

...Paul

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