tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat May 01 18:15:20 2004

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

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

Re: Verbs of quality and 'e'

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

From: "qe'San (Jon Brown)" <[email protected]>
> KLBC
>
> > > [lay'tel SIvten] Human Hol qub ghoj chaH 'e' DuH
> > [SuStel] In Klingon, you must rephrase.  One possibility:
> >
> >     chaq Human Hol qub ghoj chaH.
> >     Maybe they learn rare human languages.
>
> This is just a question as I'd like to know if this can work even if not
the
> most desireable:
>
> I understand your other comments but could DuH be used by just removing
the
> 'e' ?
>
> Human Hol qub ghoj chaH.  DuH
> It is possible. They learn rare human languages.


You put a KLBC at the top, but not in the subject, and you sound like you're
addressing me.  I'm going to answer this, and I apologize in advance to
ngabwI' if he feels like I'm treading on his territory.

Grammatically, there's no reason why you can't do this.  But let's look at
what you're actually saying.  /DuH/ "It is possible."  WHAT is possible?
You didn't use an indefinite subject (-lu') here, so this sentence must have
SOME subject; what is it?

If you can't answer this question with a grammatically appropriate subject,
I wouldn't phrase it this way.  And if you can come up with a good subject,
then I'd leave the subject in.  Subject or objects may be elided if they're
being repeated, but there's no repetition here.

And if you try to come up with a way around all that, I'd say you're just
trying to make Klingon work like English.  :)

SuStel
Stardate 4334.1

Back to archive top level