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

[lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com]

As I suspected, I was earlier in error on {ghom}. This is exactly the kind of thing that is most frustrating, since it is basically a casual exception, implying that all verbs could similarly become casual exceptions, but until Okrand casually makes them exceptional, we should try to keep track of which verbs can take objects and which ones can’t.

If we just declared that all verbs could be handled like this, then {vIH} would not be used as we’ve been explicitly told it should be used, though there’s nothing in the gloss marking the difference between {vIH} and {ghom}.

So, we are a small group of people who speak a language that lacks a single authoritative dictionary. We each create our own, and ping a collection of well-intended references provided by people who spend more time trying to figure out messes like this than the rest of us, hoping that we all wallow our way down a similar path of usage and understanding.

I wish that Okrand and a publisher would provide The Compleat Klingon Dictionary, perhaps electronically so that we could have updates. Annotations. Examples of useage. Explicit commitment in the definition to allow or exclude direct objects.

It would place more of a burden on the author of the book than any centralized entity has taken on so far, but the truth is, this burden must be born somewhere, and in this case spreading the burden among more shoulders doesn’t make the burden born by each shoulder any lighter.

lojmIt tI’wI’ nuv ‘utlh
Retired Door Repair Guy

> On Jan 5, 2015, at 2:02 PM, Steven Boozer <sboozer at uchicago.edu> wrote:
> 
> lojmIt tI'wI' nuv 'utlh:
>>> As for {ghom}, I always think of that as not taking an object. If you
>>> and I meet, it feels much more natural as {maghom} than {qaghom}. The
>>> latter sounds a little sloppy, like encoding English more than
>>> translating to Klingon. Likely, I’ve done it myself in a lazy moment.
> 
> [] De'vId:
>> And yet:  {bInajtaHvIS qeylIS Daghomjaj![] } (PK)
>> 
>> But maybe Kahless is special. If you and I meet, {maghom}. But if Kahless
>> and I meet, {qeylIS vIghom}. [] 
> 
> Well grammatically at least, Kahless is not that special...
> 
> rut yIHmey ghom Hoch 
> Everyone encounters tribbles occasionally. TKW
> 
> tlhIngan 'avwI' lughom 
> They meet a Klingon guard. PK
> 
> bong QongmeH qItI'nga' Duj tI'ang ghompu' DIvI' 'ejDo' 'entepray' 
> a sleeper ship of this [K'Tinga] class, the T'Ong, was encountered
> ... by the USS Enterprise. S15
> 
> although there are definitely more examples of {ghom} used intransitively.  Will Martin once reported (date?) that:
> 
>  In an interview with Okrand, he conveyed to me another difference.
>  The more general verb [{ghom}] works both as {qaghom} "I meet you"
>  and {maghom} "we meet". The verb {qIH} ["meet (for the first time)"]
>  always has a direct object.
> 
> 
> --
> Voragh
> Ca'Non Master of the Klingons
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Tlhingan-hol mailing list
> Tlhingan-hol at kli.org
> http://mail.kli.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol