tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Sep 01 09:40:49 2010

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RE: gha'tlhIq

Steven Boozer ([email protected]) 

ghItlhpu' mupwI':
>>Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer
>Morning

QeS 'utlh:
>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"

Isn't {pem po} "daytime morning" redundant or, at least, pedantically over-precise?  In Okrand's discussion on times of the day (st.klingon June 29, 1997), {pem po} is not found among the combinations:

     {DaHjaj po} "this morning" (lit. "today morning" or "today's
  morning") ... 
     {DaHjaj pemjep} "this midday" (literally "today midday" or
  "today's midday")
  (The phrases "this noon," "this midnight," and "this midday" are a
  little awkward in English -- we'd probably say "today at noon,"
  "tonight at midnight," "today in the middle of the day" or something
  -- but in Klingon, they fall right into place.) In Klingon, you could
  even say {DaHjaj pem} "today's daytime," which would probably be
  typically contrasted with {DaHjaj ram} "today's night" (or "tonight").
     {wa'leS po} "tomorrow morning", {cha'leS po} "the morning of the
  day after tomorrow" (literally "two-days-from-now morning"), and so
  on work quite nicely... Phrases such as {jajvam po} "this day morning"
  or "this morning" are not common, but they're not ungrammatical either.


>I agree that you're probably best off steering well clear of {yoHbogh
>matlhbogh je SuvwI'} for the moment, since it's clearly anomalous.

Although it is poetical, and this is a {gha'tlhIq}.

>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:
>
>  poH tuj bI'reS ([noun-adjectival verb] + noun)
>  "summer solstice" ('u' Invitation)
>
>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.

Since the summer solstice is by definition the longest day (June 21 in Earth's Northern Hemisphere) - and the phrase we're translating is "One Midsummer Morning" - why not drop {nI'} "be long" and go with a string of nouns (and numbers) as your date-stamp:

  poH tuj bI'reS wa' po   

I'm not sure about the placement of {wa'} "one", but I'll follow the {'u'} Invitation as a model:

  poH tuj bI'reS nungbogh wa' jaj qeylIS DIS chorghvatlh loSmaH jav qaStaHvIS.
  In the days that follow the summer solstice in the Year of Kahless 846. 



--
Voragh                          
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons

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