[Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Word of the Day: tey'be'

[Alan Anderson]

On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 1:57 PM, mayql qunenoS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
> there are two word groups I cannot understand, as far as the need for
> their existence is concerned :
>
> 1. the whole group "the son of the brother of the sister's mother of
> the third cousin of my grandmother's second uncle.."

Does your native language lack a simple word to describe cross
cousins, or to distinguish between them and parallel cousins? Klingons
(and Iroquois) would probably be puzzled by that concept being missing
from your vocabulary. If you want to see an example of why they might
be important, look at some of the taboos regarding marriage between
cousins.

> 2. to use the whatever toe.
> when I was compiling my dictionary, I couldn't understand their usefullness..

They're much more useful than {jolvoy'} and {Dom}, in my opinion. They
refer to things that I actually encounter in real life, and I have
used them in actual conversation without giggling.

On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 7:59 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
>>
>> 'aj tey'be' ghaHmo' lunum.
>> because she is the admiral's cousin they promoted her.
>
> Perfective!

What about it? I don't see a perfective meaning in either the Klingon
or the English translation. Nothing there suggests to me that he wants
to give a "promote and be done with it" or "already promoted" idea. If
you make it {...lumumpu'} or {...lumumta'} then the sentence seems
off-balance to me, requiring assumptions of context to make it come
out okay. I could imagine that it's the answer to a question like "why
has she been promoted?" or something, but then the most natural
English phrasing would be the other way around.

-- ghunchu'wI'