tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Sep 01 08:03:22 2010
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Re: gha'tlhIq
- From: R Fenwick <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: gha'tlhIq
- Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 01:01:42 +1000
- Importance: Normal
Hah! Douglas Adams. I love it, I must admit. :)
ghItlhpu' mupwI':
>Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning
FWIW, I would have put it as:
poH tujqu' po 'I'wIjDaq tlherbogh 'ej SuDqu'bogh HuH mach vItu'bogh gha'tlhIq
"ode of a small slime which was green and lumpy that I found in my armpit one
morning in the very hot season"
...
>nI'bogh jaj 'ej tujbogh po, 'I'wIjDaq vItu'pu'bogh SuDqu'bogh DochHom 'ej
>charbogh bop gha'tlhIq
>The ode of respect is about a small green and slimy thing I found in my armpit,
>on a morning of a day which is long and hot.
Indeed, this is quite a bundle of {-bogh} verbs! I think I see what you were
trying to do with {nI'bogh jaj 'ej tujbogh po}. You were intending it to parse
as [nI'bogh jaj 'ej tujbogh] [po], weren't you?
You'd be better off switching {pem} (not {jaj}, as lojmIt tI'wI' nuv rightly
pointed out) back into the clause of {tujbogh} so you can put {pem} and {po}
close together, so you could say:
nI'bogh 'ej tujbogh pem po
"the morning of a day which is long and hot"
I agree that you're probably best off steering well clear of {yoHbogh matlhbogh
je SuvwI'} for the moment, since it's clearly anomalous.
As for a better translation for "midsummer", Marc Okrand's video invitation to
the opera {'u'} contains the phrase {poH tuj bI'reS} "summer solstice", giving
us our first canon term for any of the seasons (though Klingons might well have
a special word for their own summer season too). So I used {poH tujqu'} "the
very hot time" for "midsummer".
Drop {-pu'} from {vItu'pu'bogh} as well. You don't need it. Finally, I'd forget
about {bop}; you can just use a noun-noun construction to do the same thing:
...DochHom vItu'bogh gha'tlhIq
"ode of a small thing I found..."
Noun-noun constructions show a genitive relationship between the two nouns, but
not necessarily a possessive one. {voDleH gha'tlhIq} "the ode of respect of the
emperor" could be a {gha'tlhIq} the emperor has written or owns, but it could also
just be one *about* him. And with due respect to lojmIt tI'wI' nuv, his assertion
that "[the n]oun-noun [construction] doesn't tolerate any words between the two
nouns" is flatly contradicted by canon:
poH tuj bI'reS ([noun-adjectival verb] + noun)
"summer solstice" ('u' Invitation)
He ghoSlu'bogh retlhDaq ([noun-relative verb] + noun)
"beside a route which is travelled" (S99)
veng wa'DIch Sep ([noun-ordinal numeral] + noun)
"First City district" (KGT p.16)
So I have no problem with {tujbogh pem nI' po 'I'wIjDaq...} "...in my armpit one
midsummer morning". The context is perfectly clear as to where one noun phrase
ends and the next begins.
QeS 'utlh