[Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Word of the Day: SIv

[Steven Boozer]

> Klingon Word of the Day for Sunday, June 15, 2014
> 
> Klingon word: SIv
> Part of speech: verb
> Definition: wonder

  tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh 'e' vISIv
  I wonder if you speak Klingon.
  I am curious about whether you speak Klingon

msn.onstage.startrek.expert.okrand (7/01/97):  All four words asked about... can be used in the construction {S 'e' V}, where S is a sentence, {'e'} is the pronoun (that) which refers to a previous topic (in this case S), and V is one of the verbs listed above (as well as some others). If the sentence (S) is {tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh} "you speak Klingon", it's OK to say ... {tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh 'e' vISIv} "I wonder if you speak Klingon". (The fourth example is weird from an English translation point of view, but it falls right in line in Klingon. If the English translation matched the pattern of the other three sentences, it would be "I wonder that you speak Klingon". In English, this means something like "I'm surprised that you speak Klingon" or "I don't understand how it can be that you speak Klingon", but this is not what the Klingon sentence means. The Klingon sentence means something more like "I am curious about whether you speak Klingon". The clumsiness here is the English, not the Klingon.)

charghwI' (date?):  More recently, however, [Okrand] has made a big joke about how uncertain he is about how {SIv} works. He kept saying, "I wonder about {SIv}, and then he'd grin.

Cf. charghwI's (Will Martin) interview with Okrand in HolQeD 7.4:

  WM:  ...the verb {SIv}, which was really interesting." 
  MO:  That one, yes. I've wondered about that a lot. I spent a good
       chunk of one summer, one or two summers ago, - I'm not trying
       to make a pun here, but - wondering about how that works.

Similar words:

buS 		concentrate on, focus on, think only about (v)
qIm 		pay attention (v)
vuQ 		fascinate (v)
Sov 		know (v)
Hon 		doubt (v)
tlhoj 	realize (v)
yaj 		understand (v)

Note the similarity of {SIv} "wonder" with {Sov} "know".

<<paq'batlh>>Daq SIv'a' vay'?


--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons