[848] in tlhIngan-Hol
"to be" again
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu May 13 05:59:44 1993
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Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: A.APPLEYARD@fs1.mt.umist.ac.uk
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: 13 May 93 10:07:41 GMT
mark <mark@dragonsys.COM>'s mention of `'aDonay` reminded me of another
instance of "to be" that looks awkward to translate into Klingon, which (like
Russian and Arabic and Hebrew and Swahili usually or always do) omits "is/are"
in the present tense.
Hebrew's verb "be" (h-y-y, h-w-y) and Arabic's (k-w-n etc) have past and
future tenses. Hebrew's "be" does have a present tense for use in clarifying
awkward constructions. E.g.: somewhere in Genesis or Exodus God says something
like this to (I think it was) Moses when explaining the Divine Name: "`'ehye
man 'ehye` [= "I am what I am"] ... say to the people `yahwe man yahwe` [= "He
is what He is"] ...say that `Yahwe'` [= "He who is/exists", a 3rd person
singular present verb form used as a one-word relative clause] commands ...".
"He is what he is" is as clear in Hebrew as in English, due to presence of a
verb "be". But it is not as easy in Arabic, which has no present for "be": the
best that I could manage was `huwa lladhii huwa 'iiyaahu` (dh = English hard
"th" in "the"; doubled vowel = long), which an Arab student that I knew at the
time understood, but he called it "very high language ... hard to understand".
Likewise in Klingon. The best that I can manage is:-
ghaHbogh jiH jiH = I am what I am
ghaHbogh ghaH ghaH = He is what He is
but "He Who Is/Exists" is untranslatable without a verb for "exist", for
`ghaHbogh` by itself, the nearest that I can manage if the Klingon for "exist"
is `<null>`, is liable to ambiguity as with `jiH` for "I exist".
What does a Klingon say when needing to pronounce the '=' sign when reading
an equation? In English '=' is often pronounced "is".
from: A.APPLEYARD@FS1.MT.UMIST.AC.UK
