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

[Robyn Stewart]

You’ve conquered  SoH and are now onto interrogative –‘a’.  Have you noticed that –‘a’ must go at the end of the verb to ask a question? And that in a sentence like tlhIngan SoH’a’? – are you a Klingon?—it goes on the pronoun?  That’s why I emphasize that jIH can mean “I am” so you think of it as a quasi-verb and know that it can take verb suffixes.

I want to caution you not to rely too heavily on boQwI’, not that it’s not an excellent program, but because it remembers things for you, and in order to have a conversation, you need to remember things for yourself.  An excellent way to start remembering them is to make it harder to look them up than it is to simply remember them. 

Piling up strings of nouns isn’t where I would have led you next. I would have settled for <Duj SoH> because to me a spaceship is the default kind of Duj, the others being qualified by other words. But that’s where you’ve gone, so let’s get this right.

A noun next to another noun in Klingon, <noun1> <noun2> always means “noun1’s noun2” or “the noun2 of noun1”.

bIQ Duj = “water’s vessel” “vessel of water”  -- this could equally well refer to a ship that travels ON water or one that is made of water, but without context a reasonable person is going to interpret it as a boat.

Sor Hap = “tree’s matter” “matter of a tree” i.e. wood

Qov ghIch = “Qov’s nose”, “the nose of Qov”

When you pile up more than two nouns, there can be confusion as to which way they are supposed to be associated, but the second one is always possessed by or “of” the first one.  The last noun in the string is the thing, while the others describe it, or the other noun.

Sor Hap bIQ Duj  “tree matter water vessel” – you know this is a vessel.  If you didn’t know how the world worked, you could group the nouns many ways:

((Sor Hap) bIQ) Duj -->  ((tree matter) water) vessel = a vessel of wooden water?
(Sor (Hap bIQ)) Duj --> a tree’s water of matter vessel?
Sor ((Hap bIQ) Duj) --> a vessel of water’s matter belonging to a tree?

But not being a computer, you will probably choose the grouping:
(Sor Hap) (bIQ Duj)  = (matter of tree) (vessel of water) = a wooden ship

I’m going to give you one more word, ‘oH. It means “it” or “it is” so it’s the third person singular inanimate counterpart of jIH and SoH.

qam ‘oH = it’s a foot.

Given this information, how would you translate these?

tlhIngan qam ‘oH.
qam Hom ‘oH.
baS qam ‘oH.
tlhIngan baS qam ‘oH.  (two possibilities)

Now see if you can group the nouns the way you want to say, “You are a human foot surgeon.”

Just as in English, there are other tools that would make explicit that you meant either “a surgeon for human feet” or “a foot surgeon who is a human.” You can learn those later.

- Qov



 

From: HoD qunnoQ [mailto:mihkoun at gmail.com] 
Sent: October 10, 2015 8:46
To: David Holt
Cc: tlhingan-hol at kli.org
Subject: Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country Klingon Dialogue

 

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> 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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