[135] in tlhIngan-Hol
the Shakespear kludge
dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Feb 16 19:17:02 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: krankor@IMA.ISC.COM (Captain Krankor)
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 92 16:48:18 -0500
I rather agree with HoD qeng about the whole taH pagh taHbe' issue.
I think Okrand really missed the boat on it, because in fact it is
*SIMPLY A LIE THAT THERE IS NO VERB OF "TO BE" IN KLINGON*. Of course
there is a verb of to be: it is done with the pronouns, we all know
this. What was missing from Klingon (and still is) is not the existance
verb, but *the infinitive*. You can say "it is", "i am", etc, you
just can't say "to be", just like you can't say "to run", though you
can say "I run", "He runs", etc. My original take on how you would do
"to be or not to be" in Klingon, *before* the movie and the addendum,
was this:
ghaHtaH pagh ghaHbe'taH
This uses ghaH, the third person singular pronoun acting as verb, as
third person singular is considered the most general case (from Okrand
himself). ghaH is clearly preferable to 'oH in this case, since we are
talking about the life and death of humans (in Hamlet, that is).
Now, using the new addendum, here's an alternate way to do it. I kind of
like this one {{:-)
ghaHghach ghaHbe'ghach ghap
I think this is the best one of all, and pummels taH pagh taHbe' into
the dirt. {{;-)
--Krankor
