[Tlhingan-hol] "Who are you?"

Fiat Knox fiat_knox at yahoo.co.uk
Wed Jun 5 06:57:20 PDT 2013


Interesting contradiction here.


When you really have to say "Who are you?" - that specific question, rather than {yIngu''egh} Identify yourself! - I spotted what might be a contradiction.

Conversational Klingon, that venerable old resource (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEjBhGD2rFA), lists {SoH 'Iv} as "Who are you?" (from 11:20 on the above page) ... but TKD says the following:-

"For 'Iv who? and nuq what? the question word fits into the sentence in the position that would be occupied by the answer." [TKD, 6.4]

So technically, the construction ought to be {'Iv SoH} / {'Iv ghaH} / {'Iv tlhIH} / {'Iv chaH}, and {nuq 'oH} / {nuq bIH} for "What is it? / What are they?," right?

I've been in favour of {'Iv SoH} for "Who are you?" and {nuq 'oH} for "What is it?" for years, but this has been brought to my attention by a young, yet attentive, newcomer to tlhIngan Hol whom I've been training.

So would you call it a grammatical anomaly, a quirk of tlhIngan Hol, or something else?
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