[Tlhingan-hol] "Never give up; never surrender"

[David Trimboli]

On 5/26/2012 10:01 PM, Terrence Donnelly wrote:
>
> --- On Sat, 5/26/12, David Trimboli<david at trimboli.name>  wrote:
>
>> It's been a running gag that the line from Galaxy Quest, "Never
>> give up; never surrender," comes out in Klingon as {not yIjegh;
>> not yIjegh}. I was just considering this, and decided that a
>> translation truer to the sentiment would be {not Qu'vaD yIjegh;
>> not jaghvaD yIjegh}.
>
> How about using {-'e'}? I think we've lost a powerful tool by not
> understanding its full possibilities as a topic-marker, {not Qu''e'
> jIjegh, not jagh'e' jIjegh} "As for tasks, never surrender, as for
> enemies, never surrender.}

Ha! I'm usually ignored when I suggest using {-'e'} in this way.

Per TKD 6.7, I'd probably arrange this as {Qu''e' not yIjegh; jagh'e'
not yIjegh}. {Qu''e'} and {jagh'e'} are "elements of another type"
(because they're not the objects of {yIjegh}, and {not} should go
between them and the verbs.

> Is there canon suggesting that {-vaD} is the correct suffix for
> this? "Surrender for the benefit of the enemy" sounds OK, but
> "surrender for the benefit of task(s)" doesn't equal "give up" to
> me.

I think {-vaD} works here in the same way it works for {Qu'vaD lI'
De'vam} "this information is useful for the mission." It's a
*grammatical* beneficiary, not necessarily that the beneficiary has
actually acquired something. You could just as easily say {Qu'vaD lI'Ha'
De'vam} "this information is useless for the mission." The mission
certainly hasn't acquired anything in this case. {-vaD} represents a
*syntactic* beneficiary, not necessarily a semantic one.

-- 
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/