tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Mar 29 06:24:12 2004

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Re: about

David Trimboli ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

From: <[email protected]>

> how can i translate (or convey) the idea of 'about' as in 'this book is
about
> biology' or 'i'm thinking about my last birthday party'?

There have been many answers to this question, but none have mentioned the
recently-discovered answer: /Soj/ "food."

Used idiomatically, /Soj/ means "matter, affair."  My guess is you could say
the following:


yInQeD 'oH paq Soj'e'
The book's subject is life science.  (Taking liberties with putting /yIn/
together with /QeD/.)

jIQubtaH; qoSwIj Qav 'oH Soj'e'
I'm thinking.  The topic (that I'm thinking about) is my last birthday.


I'm not thrilled with /qel/ as a way to do this, because it seems to imply
conscious thought (a book doesn't think).  This isn't demonstrated anywhere
in the canon; it's just an idea.

I'm one of the pioneers of using /-'e'/ to mark topics for sentences like
this, but I believe it has to be done in a very judicious manner.  /-'e'/
will mark the topic of the sentence, not the topic of something mentioned in
the sentence, so it can't be used willy-nilly.  In my above two sentences,
the /-'e'/ solution could conceivably be used for the second sentence:

qoSwIj Qav'e' jIQubtaH
I'm thinking; the topic is my final birthday.

Don't look for a direct correlation between the English preposition "about"
and any Klingon construction.  The concept requires different tools
depending on what you're saying.

SuStel
Stardate 4242.5

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