tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 22 23:58:04 2010
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Re: The topic marker -'e'
This could have been said in a much simpler and more straightforward way:
quv may'vam 'e' Har yIHmey neH.
Only tribbles believe that this battle is honorable.
or
quvHa' may'vam; naDev luSuvjaj yIHmey neH!
This battle is dishonorable; may only tribbles fight it.
or
yIH may' Suv qoH neH.
Only a fool fights a tribble's battle.
or
batlhwIj potlh law' may'Homvam potlh puS.
My honor is more important than this insignificant battle.
or
choSuvrupbe'ba'. yIqeq. yIH yISuv.
You are not ready to fight me. Practice. Fight a tribble.
My point is, if you have something to say in Klingon, by all means say it. Let your heart lead you to the words. If your brain works too hard trying to come up with a specific grammar and shoves words into it, you will be less successful in your utterances.
Yep. I'm over 500 messages behind... qaStaHvIS poH 'Iq mu'tetlhvam vIlaDbe'taH. ghaytanHa' Hoch vIlaDlaH...
wej De'wI'mey vIghaj, 'ach QInmeyvam HevlaH wa' neH, 'ej roD De'wI'vam vIlo'be'. chaq Holvam vIlo'laHtaHbe'. notlhchoH laHwIj.
wejpuH.
Doq
On Nov 25, 2009, at 9:51 PM, Christopher Doty wrote:
> Okay, good, then we have been talking past each other a bit, I think.
> So let me walk through my reasoning a bit...
>
> <yIH may'> is certainly "a tribble battle," or "a battle of tribbles."
> We agree on that, I think.
>
> But the battle that I am envisioning has nothing to do with tribbles.
> Tribbles is just being used as an insult. To circumlocute a bit,
> imagine two warriors in the midst of a battle. One says to the other
> (this sounds like the start of a joke, but it's not*):
>
> <may'vam 'oH may' quvHa''e'. yIHvaD 'oH yInob!>
> "This battle is a dishonorable one. Give it to the tribbles."
>
> I'd rather like another verb here (more like leave behind... chuvmoH?
> Meh. Anyway...).
>
> This is what I was getting at, not an issue of the battle being a
> battle of tribbles, but that the battle is fit only tribbles to engage
> it, so leave it that they might have it.
>
> I think maybe this thing I tried to say is weird, as it is sort of a
> translation of idiomatic English. Let's try something else.
>
> What if we take the canon
>
> <Qugh la'vaD QIn pav>
> Urgent message for Commander Kruge.
>
> And think of a more extended context. What if I said:
>
> "The transmission is an urgent message for Commander Kruge."
> <Qugh la'vaD QIn pav 'oH jabbI'ID'e'>
>
> Does this strike you as wrong for the same reason, when there is a
> clear recipient of an actual concrete thing?
>
> Chris
>
> *But maybe it should be...
>
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 17:51, David Trimboli <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Christopher Doty wrote:
>>> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 17:25, David Trimboli <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>> I am also convinced that Okrand simply forgot that the rules in TKD
>>>>>> forbid this sort of thing.
>>>>> Can you tell me what rule this is? I'm still not following. I know
>>>>> that there is a rule that suffixes can't go on the first noun in a N-N
>>>>> construction, but I haven't seen a rule that says all noun-noun
>>>>> sequences are automatically noun-noun constructions...
>>>> If a sequence of nouns is not a noun-noun construction, what is it? What
>>>> roles do those nouns play in the sentence? The earlier nouns can't be
>>>> modifying the later nouns, because that's a noun-noun construction.
>>>> Nouns with syntactic markers or timestamp nouns might sit next to each
>>>> other, but all of those apply to the *verb*, not the other nouns.
>>>
>>> Ah ha! I finally see what you are saying, I think. Namely, that in
>>> <yIHvaD may'>, <yIHvaD> must modify <may'> to get the reading I
>>> intend, but it also can't if it's in a n-n phrase, because then the
>>> first word doesn't take a suffix. Is this the issue you're seeing?
>>> If so, let me know and I'll address it specifically instead of going
>>> into detail about all of the other stuff in this email. I think we've
>>> been talking past each other a bit if this is the issue.
>>
>> Yes! That's it exactly.
>>
>> --
>> SuStel
>> tlhIngan Hol MUSH
>> http://trimboli.name/mush
>>
>>
>>
>>
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