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

[SuStel]

jIlay'DI' reH batlh jIpabchugh Qapla'meywIj Hoch vIta'ta' 'e'
DaHar'a'
Did you think that my word of honor would have carried me this far?
PB

On 2/2/2016 11:43 AM, lojmIttI'wI'nuv wrote:

> The really interesting thing here is that he has created an irrealis,
> which is a grammatical construction we’ve been told that Klingon doesn’t
> have. If X, then Y. Do you believe that? "If I honorably follow the
> rules when I promise, then I have accomplished the all of my successes.
> Do you believe that?”
>
> In other words, “Do you believe that had I kept my word of honor I would
> have been as successful as I have been?”
>
> Very clever use of Klingon grammar and vocabulary to say several things
> we have no direct way of expressing. We don’t have an equivalent to
> “word of honor”. We don’t have an irrealis. But that wasn’t an obstacle
> for Okrand. He conveyed the meaning, anyway. Bravo!

If I understand the term correctly, we have three irrealis moods 
(expressing things that are not now facts) in Klingon:

Imperative mood:
    yIQong!
    sleep!

Optative mood:
    jaghpu'lI' DaghIjjaj
    may you scare your enemies

Interrogative mood:
    cholegh'a'
    do you see me?

The English version of the sentence uses the subjunctive mood modally; 
it expresses a hypothetical. The Klingon, however, looks like it's using 
the conditional mood, but no such mood exists in Klingon. Here, a 
conditional irrealis is expressed with the indicative mood.

This just shows that while Klingon doesn't have grammar dedicated to 
conditional or subjunctive irrealis, it can still express these things 
using other moods.

And we really shouldn't be surprised by this. {bIje'be'chugh vaj bIHegh} 
"if you do not buy then you die" is as conditional as Okrand's sentence 
in paq'batlh. Without actually checking, I suppose in Klingon all main 
sentences with conditional subordinate clauses are conditional mood in 
another mood's clothing.

-- 
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/