[Tlhingan-hol] "Like that".

[Will Martin]

This morning, walking to work, I noticed a car turning around in the street and doing a really bad job of it. I thought, “Why is he driving like that?”

Then, as I often do when talking to myself like that, I thought about how I’d say it in Klingon…

… until I realized that I don’t know how to say it in Klingon. At least not as an equivalent question. I can obviously stretch the verb “pilot” to say {qatlh ‘orlI’…} and then I don’t know how to say, “like that.”

I considered saying {Huj ‘orlI’ghach.} I could even turn it into a question. {qatlh Huj ‘orlI’ghach?}

Suddenly, I realized that there’s a relationship between adjectives and adverbs that can massively expand Klingon vocabulary in the area of adverbs. We don’t have a lot of them. We can’t say, for example, “He is walking weirdly.” But we can say {taQ yItlI’ghach.}

We don’t have an equivalent mechanism for turning nouns into verbs, so we can’t use adverbs like {nom} or {QIt} to describe a fast car or a slow computer. We can fall back on applying it to verbs describing what the noun is doing quickly or slowly, but how do I say “I want a faster computer,”? I’m tempted to say {De’wI’ vIneHbogh nom law’ De’wI’ vIghajbogh nom puS.} but that doesn’t work because {nom} is not an adjective.

nom vumlaH De’wI’ vIneghbogh ‘ach reH QIt vum De’wI’wIj.

Well, that assumes that we can use two adverbs on one verb, and we don’t really have license to do that. I guess I could say:

nom vumlaH De’wI’ vIneHbogh ‘ach QIt vumtaH De’wI’wIj.

It works, but it’s kind of sad.

Or “We need our fastest runner to deliver this message.”

{QInvam wIHIjnIS. qetchu’ ‘Iv?}

Weak, but I guess it works.

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



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