[123] in tlhIngan-Hol
'Iv'e' ... ?
dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Feb 16 15:24:18 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: mosquito@Athena.MIT.EDU
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 92 19:33:26 -0500
While teaching Klingon, I was ad-libbing class exercises for the students and
accidentally ran into a problem.
How would you say, "Who is in the room?"
At first, I thought:
pa'Daq ghaH 'Iv'e'?
But this is kinda weird. You're making a topic about "who". It's
like saying, "Well, I don't know about John, but concerning who, he's
in the room."
Japanese has a similar suffix, -wa, to indicate topicalization. And come
to think of it, I don't think I've ever heard naniwa (what-wa) or darewa
(who-wa), or anything like that. It sounds weird in Japanese.
Now, maybe Klingon has no such problem with topicalizing an unknown.
Or maybe the correct thing to do is to treat the "'Iv" as a pronoun, so
that you would say, "pa'Daq 'Iv?"
Or maybe you just have to use other constructions like "pa'Daq 'Iv tu'lu'?"
or "'Iv ghaH pa'Daq ghaHbogh ghot'e'?"
\ /
--OO--
!! mosquito@athena.mit.edu
Kevin Iga
