[Tlhingan-hol] nuq bop bom: 'ay' cha'vatlh wejmaH wej: pumDI' lojmIt

[Robyn Stewart]

My mailer has made a hash out of what my phone sent. Re-edited here.

At 05:55 '?????' 7/16/2012, you wrote:
>On 2012-07-15, at 23:16, Rohan Fenwick - QeS 'utlh 
><qeslagh at hotmail.com> wrote:

> > pay' vay' qaw vajar: not Hota'ro' ngaghmeH tlhobta' vajar.
>  I'm not sure I like the {X-meH tlhob} construction; it feels a lot 
> like an Englishism, "he asked to X" rendered directly into Klingon. 
> It might just be my instincts, of course; I'd've gone with ngagh 'e' tlhob.

 > I'll think about that one.

Thought about it and remembered one reason it isn't ngagh 'e' tlhob. 
I needed the perfective to be very unambiguous on tlhobta'. Not he 
didn't habitually, not he wasn't going to, but he never had 
propositioned her for sex. I don't know if it helps your instinct any 
to know that "he asked to X" is marked speech in my idiolect of 
English.  It sounds like the translation of something on a language 
learning tape, as opposed to something someone would say. I was 
definitely going for he hadn't growled at her for the purpose of 
mating, but used tlhob, because we don't have a verb "make a low 
sound like a chemvaH."

The placement of {not}, however, was an error and has been corrected.

  >> vajar SaHqu'pu' 'ej puqchaj boghmoH neHbejpu'. > > As 
ghunchu'wI' pointed out not long ago, since verb-neH is in many 
ways > parallel to X 'e' Y, an aspect suffix may not be able to 
appear on neH > in this kind of construct. I'll leave that up to you, 
though. bepwI'pu' vIQuchmoH vIneH.

I made it:{puqchaj boghmoH neHbej, Heghpa'.} I kind of needed that 
perfective. yatlhtaHvIS vajar be'nal cha'DIch, Hegh.

pa' lu'elDI' Dachlaw' qImyal. pa' DojmoH Dochmey wagh. > > Ugh... if 
this were in English I'd tell you to buy a thesaurus. :P "The > 
expensive things" seems a bit blah.

Thought about this more in the air today. You can read it as 
expensive things, expensive objects, objects d'art ...

- Qov