tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri May 13 08:22:59 2011

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

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

RE: Hegh'a' Holmaj?

Steven Boozer ([email protected]) 

lojmIt tI'wI' nuv:
> DaHjaj po jIvemmeH mughuHmoH tlhaqwIj. jIHu'. jItuQ'eghmoH. nIQ vISop. yaHwIj vIghoSmeH jIyIt. chal vIqel. tugh SISchugh vISIv. 
>
> (I know. Some will object to that construction and doubtless tell me how I should have said it. 
> Consider it a favor I'm doing you to give you something to respond to and jar you out of an otherwise boring day.)

Well I was all set to object on cue that "I wonder if it will rain soon" is just colloquial English variant of "I wonder whether it will rain soon" - and thus the dreaded QAO: *{tugh SIS'a' 'e' vISIv} - when I noticed something in my notes for {Siv}.  Here's part of Okrand's post from msn.onstage.startrek.expert.okrand (7/01/1997):

   All four words asked about ({tul} "hope," {Qub} "think," {Sov} "know," and {SIv} "wonder")
   can be used in the construction {S 'e' V}, where S is a sentence, {'e'} is the pronoun (that)
   which refers to a previous topic (in this case S), and V is one of the verbs listed above (as
   well as some others). If the sentence (S) is {tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh} "you speak Klingon", it's
   OK to say ... {tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh 'e' vISIv} "I wonder if you speak Klingon". (The fourth
   example is weird from an English translation point of view, but it falls right in line in Klingon.
   If the English translation matched the pattern of the other three sentences, it would be "I 
   wonder that you speak Klingon". In English, this means something like "I'm surprised that 
   you speak Klingon" or "I don't understand how it can be that you speak Klingon", but this
   is not what the Klingon sentence means. The Klingon sentence means something more
   like "I am curious about whether you speak Klingon". The clumsiness here is the English,
   not the Klingon.)

If I'm reading this correctly, it would seem to permit {tugh SIS 'e' vISIv} "I am curious about whether it will rain soon".  If that interpretation is wrong, then I suggest taking full advantage of punctuation:  

   tugh SIS'a'?   jISIv.  
   "Will it rain soon?  I wonder."

    tugh SIS'a'?  'e' vISIv.  
   "Will it rain soon?  I wonder about that."

although some might object that the last is just a sneaky way to finesse the forbidden QAO.  {SIV} as we all know, is a wonderment:

   More recently, however, [Okrand] has made a big joke about how uncertain he is
   about how {SIv} works. He kept saying, 'I wonder about {SIv},' and then he'd grin.
   [charghwI']

   WM: "...the verb {SIv}, which was really interesting." 
   MO: "That one, yes. I've wondered about that a lot. I spent a good chunk of one
            summer, one or two summers ago - I'm not trying to make a pun here - but
            wondering about how that works.
    [charghwI's interview with MO, HQ 7.4]


--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons

Back to archive top level