tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 27 09:43:16 2007
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Re: Topic (was: Re: Dilbert Comic in Klingon for February 9, 2007
- From: Doq <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Topic (was: Re: Dilbert Comic in Klingon for February 9, 2007
- Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 12:42:42 -0500 (EST)
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There's nothing wrong with {qatoy'taH wa'ben 'e' vItagh}, though it basically says the same thing as {wa'ben qatoy'choH} and is less concise. It does have one problem in terms of expressing "I have served you for the past year." What you are actually saying is, "A year ago, I began serving you." That says nothing about now. Are you still serving? I guess context will have to provide that information, since it would work just as well if someone was committed to service for a month and someone asked, "When did you start your month of service?" {wa'ben qatoy'choH.}
Klingon apparently allows us to ether provide a time stamp or provide a duration, but not both. So, if you want an anchored duration (a duration that has a specific time attached to it), you apparently need to anchor both ends of it, and since a verb can only have one time stamp, you need to repeat the verb for the beginning and end of the duration, or maybe set the beginning and then give a duration. You just can't do it without repeating the verb.
Hmmm.
{wa' DIS'e' wa'ben qatoy'choHtaH.}
No. I don't like it, either.
Of course, if it did work, we could say stuff like:
{cha'DIS'e' wa'ben qatoy'choHtaH.}
This could convey that I'm one year into a two year commitment.
Forgive my explorations...
Doq
-----Original Message-----
>From: McArdle <[email protected]>
>Sent: Feb 27, 2007 12:07 PM
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: Re: Topic (was: Re: Dilbert Comic in Klingon for February 9, 2007
>
>QeS 'utlh <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >ja'taH 'ISqu':
>>> wa'ben qatoy'choH 'ej qaStaHvIS wa' DIS qatoy'taH.
>>
>>jangtaH Doq:
>>>That's the kind of awkward work-around I was trying to avoid.
>>
>>"I began serving you a year ago and for one year I continue to serve
>>you." I
>>see no problem. Remember that Klingon often splits up what would be a
>>single
>>English sentence into two sentences. And the lack of a Klingon
>>equivalent
>>for the English preposition "for" (which really means "during" here,
>>which
>>is usually translated as {qaStaHvIS}) is only to be expected, since
>>Klingon
>>doesn't have the range of prepositions that English does anyway.
>
> For those who object to the repetition of the verb (though I recognize that this perfectly good Klingon style), how about:
>
> qatoy'taH wa'ben 'e' vItagh
>
> This seems (to me) to mean exactly what we want it to mean. Are there objections to it from a grammatical (or, for that matter, any other) point of view?
>
> Savan.
>
> mIq'ey
>
>
>
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