[474] in tlhIngan-Hol
Shake that stick
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Fri Jan 29 19:41:22 1993
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
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Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Captain Krankor <krankor@codex.prds.cdx.mot.com>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 17:58:26 -0500
Hey gang.
So, I've been waiting for somebody else to take a crack at the stick
sentence, but nobody has, so I guess I'll give it a shot.
If you recall, the original was:
"Spock, how .....many Klingons ARE there guarding......this planet?"
"Well, Captain, more than you could shake a stick at, plus the stick."
Not easy at all, but I think we can give it a go.
The first problem is that we have no word for "stick". So we're
gonna change it to a sword. Sue me.
Next is our old friend, the annoying lu'/laH problem: The "you"
in this case is most certainly an indefinite subject; in French you
would use "on". But the "could" implies -laH. There are several
kludges we could employ; I'm gonna cheese out by using an ambiguity
in the proper use of -meH. It sometimes looks like verbs using -meH
don't need a subject, that indefinite subject is implied. In other
cases though, an explicit subject is used. Normally I tend to feel
that the explicit subject is more proper, since nothing explicitly
says -meH implies indefinite subject. However, the indefinite subject
hypothesis is not a whole-cloth fabrication either. Consider this
example sentence in the dictionary:
Dochvetlh DIlmeH Huch 'ar DaneH? "How much do you want for that?"
Here, there's no subject given on DIl. An explicit "he/she/it"
subject, as implied by the 0 prefix, makes no sense; clearly the
phrase "Dochvetlh DIlmeH" is meant to mean "in order to pay for
that", "in order that one pay for that".
(On the other hand, the examples with luHoHmeH on p. 65 support the
explicit subject theory)
Of course, in this context it might actually be more amusing to NOT
use indefinite subject. It would render the meaning something like
"more than YOU can shake a stick at", implying that Vulcans can obviously
shake a stick at more things than humans. {{:-) But I think we've
already met our quota of humor, what with the Shatneresque
meaningless pauses and all.
So here we go. It actually turned out to be even harder than I
expected:
"Spock, yuQvam..... 'avtaH tlhIngan..... 'ar?"
"toH, HoD, 'avtaHbogh mI' law' law' 'etlh joqmoHlaHmeH
mI''e' tu'nISlu'bogh 'etlh je law' puS"
Yeah, it's clunky, but we knew it would be before we started. The
law'/puS construction is *very* limited, as we all know, and as
marqem has elaborated on, so it's no surprise we have to do some
serious handstands.
--Krankor
