[86240] in tlhIngan-Hol
RE: qIpmeH Qatlh'a'?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven Boozer)
Fri Jul 10 09:57:44 2009
From: Steven Boozer <sboozer@uchicago.edu>
To: "'tlhingan-hol@kli.org'" <tlhingan-hol@kli.org>
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:52:49 -0500
In-Reply-To: <4A562E57.8010804@trimboli.name>
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
Voragh:
>> I expected more, but I could only find 3 examples of {-'a'} on a
>> quality:
>>
>> qIpmeH Qatlh'a'?
>> Difficult to hit? ST5
SuStel:
>And in this case the entire sentence is suspect, because it's wrong. It
>literally means something like, "Is it [the probe] being difficult so
>that I may hit it?" Okrand forgot that {-meH} represents a purpose
>clause, not every English infinitive. More appropriate would have been
>something like, {Qatlh'a' qIpmeH 'eb} "Is the opportunity for hitting
>difficult?"
Actually, the original line was {wIqIpmeH Qatlh'a'}. It's possible the actor mis-spoke and omitted - clipped? - the prefix. This line appears in Okrand's article about Klingon lines from scenes in an earlier draft of the script missing from the final cut (see (HolQeD 8.4:12-13). Here's the relevant part of my ST5 transcript:
KLAA: qIpmeH Qatlh'a'? [heard]
[wIqIpmeH Qatlh'a'] [script]
(Difficult to hit?) [subtitle]
--
Voragh
Canon Master of the Klingons
