[922] in tlhIngan-Hol
A love-poem and a paternoster
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon May 24 11:58:31 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
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: (Mark E. Shoulson) <shoulson@ctr.columbia.edu>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Mon, 24 May 93 10:38:15 -0400
In-Reply-To: Nick Nicholas's message of Sun, 23 May 1993 15:19:09 +1000 (EST) <
>From: nsn@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (Nick Nicholas)
>Date: Sun, 23 May 1993 15:19:09 +1000 (EST)
>X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21]
>Mime-Version: 1.0
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>Content-Length: 2132
>Having survived the Conversational Klingon tape ("Buy or Die" indeed!), two
>offerings. First: the canonical sample of a language, artificial or not, seems
>to have always been the Paternoster. Without getting into any debate on
>religious bias, here's my rendition of it:
A Paternoster! Now Klingon can truly take its ranks among the constructed
languages of the world. Why is it that it's always the standard example?
Go figure.
>QI'tu'Daq Datu'lu'bogh vavwI':
I note here that you're using the appositive construction someone
mentioned. I guess it makes sense. You're the one who knows the Greek,
but is it "My Father" or "Our Father"? If the latter (as in English), it
should be "vavma'".
>laDanquvjaj ponglIj.
I assume you meant to type "lalDanquvjaj". Religion-honored... hallowed...
Seems to work.
>pawjaj che'ghachlIj.
>qaSjaj neHDochlIj.
neHDochlIj="thy will"? Thy want-thing... Hrm. Would "qaSjaj Doch
DaneHbogh" be too wordy?
>QI'tu'Daq Dochvam qaSghach rapjaj juHqo'Daq Dochvam qaSghach.
Ooog, Klingon does tend to get a little prolix. Perhaps dropping "Dochvam"
and making it "qaSghachDaj" (its occurence)? Maybe "rur" (resemble)
instead of "rap" (be the same)?
>DaHjajDaq maHvaD ghoDDung SojwIj yInob.
Nound-phrases of time can be used adverbially, as shown in the tape (DaHjaj
jI'oj), and somewhere in the book that I can't find now. So it would be
just "DaHjaj". I don't understand ghoDDung. "ghoD" is a verb "to stuff",
and "Dung" is "area above". I'm not sure how that works for "daily" (in
"daily bread", which is what I presume you're translating, though I know
you once said that the word used is really rare and probably means
something different, "Give us this day our supersubstantial bread", I think
you once said.) For "daily bread", maybe "jaj SojwIj", or "Hochjaj SojwIj"
(all-day's our-bread). Can you use noun-noun possessives and possessive
suffixes? Likely, but it may be a little weird. Supersubstantial bread?
(now I see where you got ghoDDung!) er, "Hap nIvbogh Sojmaj"? (maybe
technical word for "matter"). Should it be "Sojmaj" (our food) and not
"SojwIj" (my food)?
>nuQu'maghwI'pu' DIHupbe'.
This line really has me kind of lost. "Qu'" is a noun (duty), as is
"maghwI'pu'" (traitors), but you have a "nu-" prefix on them, which is a
verb prefix. Checking the online KJV here, I see "and forgive us our
debts, as we forgive our debtors". Hrm, can't find a word for "owe". I
can see "DIHupbe'" for "we forgive them", but I'm missing the first part of
the sentence. Maybe something with "DIl" (pay) or "ngIp" (borrow) for
"debt"? Uh, "ngIpghachmeymajmo' ghoHupQo', ngIpwI'maj DIHupbe'", perhaps?
It misses the "as" in the original, and that first word is a doozy.
>vaj pIQu'maghmo' ghoHupQo'.
Ooooooh, I see. You reversed the order so you could use "vaj". OK, cool.
But you still have verb-prefixes on nouns. Ah, I see, you're nominalizing
the verbs, eliding the "-ghach" because of the noun-suffixes, but you're
nominalizing them complete with verb prefixes: so "nuQu'maghwI'pu'" is
"[they who] duty-betray-us", and "pIQu'magh" is "our duty-betraying you."
I don't trust it, Nick. For one thing, I don't see the reason for the
"Qu'". But more importantly, *maybe* I could see nominalizing a whole
sentence like that with "-ghach", after all, we allow "-ghach"ified verbs
to take objects and even subjects, so why not the prefixes for them. But
just as suffixed verbs need the "-ghach", I think the "-ghach" is really
kind of necessary here with prefixed verbs. The first sentence use "-wI'"
to nominalize, which is a different story, and probably more acceptable.
It still sounds mighty twisty; I'd probably prefer the possibly ambiguous
"maghwI'pu'maj" (our traitors, which could be traitors to someone else who
work for us) to "?numaghwI'pu'" (those who betray us). Then again, it's
something to consider, perhaps this is a good and productive construction.
>'ej matlhu' 'e' yIchaw'Qo'.
Good casting of "lead us not into temptation", not implying that God is
doing the tempting, and avoiding the English idiom of "leading".
>'a mIghwI'vo' ghoToD.
>che'ghach, woQ, quv je Daghajmo'.
All in all, way cool, and it opens up some room for discussion.
OK, OK, so I'm critiquing before Krankor. Everyone cracks now and then.
>Second, a poem I wrote my SO. Not a good poem, I'll admit. Not even all that
>Klingonic. But whatever.
I won't mess with this one, one's enough for now.
>Btw, I got the Klingon TeXfont downloaded, and am slightly confused. I've
>seen a Klingon alphabet in which single letters were allocated the digraphs
>like ch, gh, tlh, etc., in The Journal of Planned Languages. This TexFont
>looks nothing like it, and doesn't have digraphs accounted for. Furthermore,
>the author's compulsion to have ligatures between capitals and small letters,
>giving the text of TKD as evidence, strongly suggests to me that this is a
>pre-Okrand alphabet. Could someone elucidate what the deal is with the
>alphabet?
Yes, this is the "Mandel Orthography", which, I understand, does not
correspond to the tlhIngan Hol phonology (I think it predates tlhIngan
Hol). There is also the "Okuda script" which *does* correspond to it,
which is what you saw in the JPL. Don't tell my boss, but for some reason
I've found myself making a METAFONT version of that one myself. It's
fairly ugly, at least on the inside; I'm doing it by squinting at enlarged
copies of the font through graph-paper and typing in coordinates. But hey,
it's recognizable. I'm doing "r" now, and who knows, I may finish it
someday. I'll keep you all posted.
~mark
