[85473] in tlhIngan-Hol
Question problem
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Doq)
Mon May 18 21:29:53 2009
From: Doq <doq@embarqmail.com>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Date: Mon, 18 May 2009 21:27:40 -0400
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
My computer was starting more slowly than usual. I often talk to my
computer in Klingon, since it's one of the few things or persons I
talk to that won't complain if I speak Klingon to it.
I wanted to ask, "Why are you starting slowly?"
Suddenly, I realized that I had one grammatical slot to put two words
in. I don't think we've been given any license to use two adverbials
with a single verb, since adverbials don't have conjunctions like
nouns and verbs do. Meanwhile, the question word for "why" is
grammatically treated as an adverbial, so I'm stuck.
I could cheat:
QIt bItaghlI'. Qatlh qaS?
Any other ideas?
I mean, if we just stuffed the two adverbials together, which one goes
first?
QIt Qatlh bItaghlI'?
Qatlh QIt bItaghlI'?
Of course the second one sounds more correct, but that's just because
it sounds better that way in English. Would a Klingon think it works
that way?
Doq
