[739] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: A difficult sentence
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Fri Apr 30 18:07:30 1993
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
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, 30 Apr 93 16:26:13 -0400
A quick response to A.APPLEYARD's recent queries:
(1) Lacking any contradicting data, we have every right to presume that
verbs with -ghach take subject and object in the same way, in the same
place. This turns out to be very useful, particularly with the law'/puS
construction (where nouns are required). Thus, "I speak Klingon better
than the Vulcan" can be done as:
tlhIngan Hol vIjatlhghach QaQ law' tlhIngan Hol jatlhghach vulqangan QaQ puS
Literally: "My Klingon-speaking's goodness is many; the Vulcan's Klingon
speaking's goodness is few", or "My Klingon-speaking is better than the
Vulcan's Klingon-speaking". Note that, if you wanted to, you could also
express the who's-doing-the-speaking with a possessive:
tlhIngan Hol jatlhghachwIj QaQ law' vulqan tlhIngan Hol jatlhghach QaQ puS
Cumbersome? Yes. But the essential difficulties of the law'/puS construction
are already well documented. At least we have a way to say what we want.
(3) Nouns can NOT take verb suffixes. Nouns can never implicitly mean "to be".
Any time you want to express "to be", you have to use a pronoun. 6.3 has NOT
been revoked. So, you are essentially correct when you end up with "the
science officer who was a Vulcan" being vulqangan ghaHbogh QeDpIn-- the only
problem is it needs to be QeDpIn'e' (again, by 6.3). A reminder: Klingon I's
are uppercase. Please write them that way.
--Krankor
