[Tlhingan-hol] Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country Klingon Dialogue

Sat Oct 10 11:09:51 PDT 2015

Some small notes:

The written Klingon that we use here is a phonetic representation of speech. It is not a Klingon writing system. We tend to include punctuation to make meaning understood easier, but there are no guidelines for punctuation in The Klingon Dictionary, or any other publication authored by Dr. Marc Okrand. We’ve pretty much made up our own use of punctuation. It wasn’t an intentional standard. It has just evolved over the years.

So, we use question marks because we want to. We don’t have to. We just want to.

Klingon questions are grammatically obvious enough that question marks are definitely unnecessary, but we use them because we are accustomed to using them. If you are writing to someone who speaks Klingon and you don’t want people who would see it who don’t speak Klingon to know that there’s a question there, leave out the question mark. The Klingon speaker will definitely understand that it is a question.

Also, since the Romanized alphabet includes an apostrophe, which is remarkably similar to a single quote, a pair of which is remarkably similar to a double quote, we don’t use quotation marks with Klingon. We use << and >>.

Why? 

Because we choose to. It makes it clearer. It works for us.

And while I’m at it, you might notice that when we include Klingon word, like {Qu’vatlh} in what is otherwise English speech, we use curly braces. Again, somebody just made that up and the rest of us liked it and started doing it. It works.

So, you might consider taking up these conventions commonly used here, but rarely explained.

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

> On Oct 10, 2015, at 11:46 AM, HoD qunnoQ <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> thanks for the corrections ! yes indeed i tried to say that Qov is a space ship,but i got the word order wrong ; but now i understand how i should have written it.
> 
> moving on to your new question,as i understand it,it asks "am i a paper book ?" but yet another question arises..  the 'a' is an interrogative ; why place a question mark at the end ? isn't that unnecessary ?
> 
> and to try to answer to the question : ghobe'. qam HaqwI' SoH.  
> 
> but if wanted to write "no,you are a human foot surgeon" how would i write it ? "ghobe'. qam HaqwI' Human SoH " ?
> 
> qunnoQ
> 
> On Sat, Oct 10, 2015 at 3:42 PM, David Holt <kenjutsuka at live.com <mailto:kenjutsuka at live.com>> wrote:
> >> HaqwI' JIH je. qam HaqwI' jIH. ro HaqwI' SoH'a'?
> >
> > with the help of the boQwI app i think that this means : "i'm a surgeon
> > too. a foot surgeon. are you a trunk/body surgeon ?"
> 
> maj!
> 
> > i would like to give the reply "no,i'm an orthopaedic surgeon". So
> > maybe i would say : "Qo'. ghIv HaqwI' jiH."
> 
> Check what boQwI' says about {Qo'} as an exclamation.  It cannot be used to answer a "yes" or "no" question.  It is used when somebody tells you to do something and you refuse.  Now look up {ghobe'}.  The sentence which follows that was very well done.  majQa'!
> 
> > @ Qov (robyn) : Duj logh SoH ! 
> 
> Perfect use of {SoH}!  Though I think the other words may have gotten a little mixed up.
> 
> When you put two nouns together (like {ghIv HaqwI'} and {Duj logh}), the second noun is the thing being described and the first noun modifies it in some way.  A common relationship between the two is that the first noun is owner of the second noun.  But it may also be that the second noun is made out of the first noun.  Or that second noun is the type used by the first noun.  Other more complicated relationships are possible, but the point it's a first-noun kind of second-noun.  By the way, this is exactly how we do it in English, too and when you are putting two nouns together you can often (but not always) just put the English and Klingon in the same order (for possession we add 's in English, but nothing in Klingon).  In those cases where that is not clear, it helps to reverse the order of the words and insert "of".
> 
> {janSIy SID} is "Johnshee's patient" (ownership).  {baS Haqtaj} is a "steel scalpel" (made of).  {tlhIngan Duj} is a "Klingon ship" (used by).  {yIn Quj} is the "game of life" (more complicated relationship).
> 
> So I am a "foot kind of surgeon", a "foot surgeon", or a "surgeon of the foot".  You are a "limb kind of surgeon", a "limb surgeon", or a "surgeon of the limbs".  And you've described Qov as a "ship kind of outer space", a "ship outer space", or an "outer space of a ship".  You might have instead meant {Duj} to mean "instinct", but I'm proceeding under the assumption that you meant to call Qov a "space ship".  If that's the case, then you're saying she's a kind of ship and the kind of ship is a space kind.  The descriptor goes first followed by the thing being described.  So {logh Duj} is "space ship".
> 
> nav paq jIH'a'?
> 
> janSIy
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