tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Sep 14 08:04:26 2010
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Re: jISIv
- From: R Fenwick <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: jISIv
- Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 01:02:57 +1000
- Importance: Normal
ghItlhpu' lojmIt tI'wI' nuv:
>I think of time stamps as either being absolute (like midnight) or relative TO NOW
>(like tomorrow). I don't think that a time stamp is the right grammatical structure
>to talk about the length of a span of time between two events, neither of which is
>now.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. HIchuH.
taH:
>My suggestion {qaSpu'mo' tup 'ar jIpaS?} translates to "I will be late because how
>many minutes have happened?" Is it really that obtuse?
I misparsed your sentence, as I'd still been thinking about your previous mention of
the possibility of {tup 'ar jIpaS} on its own. HIvqa' veqlargh.
Even so, I'm not convinced {qaSpu'mo' tup 'ar} is appropriate. It feels indirect, too
much like an attempt to render the English too closely. You wouldn't really be late
because five minutes happened (since the minutes will tick on anyway); you'd be late
because you were sick, because the shuttlecraft was late, or whatever.
Now that I think about it, I wonder if {tup 'armo'} might be a little better, using
the type 5 noun suffix {-mo'} instead of the type 9 verb suffix. "I am late because
of how many minutes?" Still don't think I like it much, but what do you think?
>You seem fixated on using a time stamp here.
The reason I was focusing on using a time stamp was because I believed that that's
what you were doing, and I was offering my opinion on how to make *your* sentences
work. You offered three possibilities. One was {tup 'ar vIpaS}, which I find very
problematic. One was {tugh jIpaSqu' 'e' vISIv}, which is fine but doesn't really
contain the idea of "how much" that you want to preserve. And the third was {tup 'ar
jIpaS}, which is also grammatical, but if and only if {tup 'ar} is a time stamp.
In fairness, I suspect you in your turn are intent on shoehorning this into a single
Klingon sentence. DloraH's suggestion is perfect: {chaq jIpaS. ghorgh jIpaw?}. Or,
if you want to be specific with time periods, my suggestion of {chaq jIpaS. tup 'ar
pIq jIpaw?} (with {tup} replaceable by any other time noun you like, of course).
>You really can talk about time without always having to use it as a time stamp.
net Sovchu'. qayajHa'pu'qu' neH 'e' vIjatlh.
QeS 'utlh