[tlhIngan Hol] A thought on the irrealis construction

mayqel qunenoS mihkoun at gmail.com
Thu Nov 3 07:34:03 PDT 2016


I remember having discussed here, that klingon doesn't possess the grammar
to say "if klingon possessed an irrealis suffix, then I wouldn't be writing
this post".

So far so good..

I've been trying to find a way to overcome this problem, and I thought of
the following approach:

Lets say, I want to write "if I possessed foresight, I would have known my
dog is stupid". If I write:

{'op ben leSSov vIghajbe', 'ach ngugh vIghajchugh..}

then the reader probably would understand what I'm trying to say. He would
read "some years ago I don't have foresight, but at that time if I have
it.."

Intentionally, on the given translation I didn't write "some years ago I
didn't have foresight, but at that time if I had it..", because I wanted to
show that even if the mind of the reader doesn't "change to irrealis gear"
then he will understand (hopefully) the intented meaning.

So, I believe/think/assume/hope, that by an appropriate introduction one
could find a workaround to compensate for the missing irrealis construction.

Of course, I'm not writting this only to kill some time before I need to go
to work again, so if someone could share some thoughts on this, then I
would be happy (or sad depending on what he actually writes..)

qunnoH
ghoghwIj HablI'vo' vIngeHta'
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