tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Nov 17 11:11:18 2007

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



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

nuqDaq 'oH puchpa''e'?

Doq ([email protected])



Okay. So, I've become convinced that it is time to pull all my little  
piles of words into one place. Vocabulary has always been my  
weakness. I'm trying to go back to original sources whenever I can.  
I'm using Bento, a beta database from FileMaker, exclusively for OS X  
10.5. It's way cool and I think it will help me a lot in my task of  
building my own dictionary of words I trust to be from Okrand in  
Okrand's words.

Looking over canon examples and all that, I've come to realize that  
one of the first sentences that everybody learns is actually quite  
strange:

nuqDaq 'oH puchpa''e'.

It doesn't LOOK strange, if you have an intermediate grasp of the  
language. It looks a lot like an example in TKD, page 68:

puqpu' chaH qama'pu''e'.

The pronoun {chaH} is acting as the verb to be. It has a subject and  
an object. The subject gets {-'e'}. We all know that.

But in our question about the location of the bathroom, the pronoun  
{'oH} doesn't have an object. When that happens, we're supposed to  
make sentences like {tlhIngan maH}. We're not supposed to say things  
like {maH tlhIngan'e'}.

I mean, if I were to translate, "Here, we are Klingons," I'd tend to  
say {naDev tlhIngan maH.} If I were to use the bathroom example,  
however, I'd have to say, {naDev maH tlhIngan'e'.}

{nuqDaq} is not acting like a direct object. It's a location.

Then again, in TKD on page 68, Okrand does give another example:

pa'DajDaq ghaHtaH la''e'.

I would have expected {pa'DajDaq la' ghaHtaH.}

Actually, if I didn't have the canon example and someone asked me how  
to translate "Where is the bathroom?", I'd have said, {nuqDaq puchpa'  
tu'lu'?}

I mean, to me, that's what I'm really asking. "Where does one find/ 
discover the bathroom?"

Hmm. It would be even more characteristically Klingon to say:

puchpu' vInejlI'. nuqDaq vISamlaH?

I've always loved the difference between those verbs; the way one  
fulfills the other. It's like another pair:

tuvlaHghachwIj DaDajlI'. yItobQo'.

Wouldn't you just love to say that to certain people and have them  
deeply understand?

So, are these [location pronoun subject{-'e'}] examples that seem  
inconsistent with the rest of canon vestigial remnants of an immature  
period in the development of the language, or is there some  
grammatical rule here that Okrand has not yet explained? Or have I  
simply missed something?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Doq 





Back to archive top level