[tlhIngan Hol] As soon as I had tickled the dog

[Lieven]

Am 22.08.2016 um 16:59 schrieb mayqel qunenoS:
> Many times I have a hard time *feeling* the difference between tense
> and aspect, thus the confusion. And the problem is, I can't find a way
> to overcome this problem.

The confusion lies in the english translation.
I'm not sure this helps, but I'll try anyway. The difference is the 
following: (please any linguistic expert forgive me if I'm not 100% 
accurate, it's partially done intentionally)

Tense is about time, talking about things happening in the past, but 
also the future.

Aspect talks about the completeness of an event: it may be ongoing or 
may be finished.

As I wrote before, you can do nothing wrong when you only write without 
using the aspect.

Now pay attention:
Wehn you FEEL about the need of using an aspect suffix, think about the 
following points first:
- Why do you use it?
If you think "because it happened in the past", then drop it.

- Is it a completed action? Do you want to focus on the completion of 
the action? is that important to mention?
"I killed him." period. It's over. -> use Aspect suffix
"I ate the pizza." It's gone now. -> use Aspect suffix

If you are still not sure, of course you can ask someone, but if unsure, 
it's better to avoid it. That's never wrong.

------------

I won't give more examples for not confusing you, and I intentionally 
did not talk about the other aspect suffixes.

You will learn it over time.

> Believe it or not (this will sound strange), I find rather creepy to
> use {targh} for dog. Why ? Because klingons eat the heart of targs,
> and it gives me the creeps just to think of a dog being treated that
> way.

I understand. Actually, the Targ is more like a pig. But I like using 
the word anyway, since we have no word closer to the meaning of a dog.


-- 
Lieven L. Litaer
aka Quvar valer 'utlh
Grammarian of the KLI
http://www.facebook.com/Klingonteacher
http://www.klingonwiki.net