[tlhIngan Hol] With regards to invectives

[Steven Boozer]

AFAIK the only example of an expletive used “within the sentence” – rather than an introductory exclamation or the like – was from Okrand’s notes for ST5 in a line that didn’t make it into the movie:

  ghuy' po'qu'
  Damn he's good (i.e. Kirk; ST5 notes)

and the English could easily be re-punctuated “Damn! He’s good.”

Oddly, I couldn’t find any examples of invective used in the paq’batlh.  Perhaps they’re considered inappropriate in religious/classical literature - even for Klingons!  (qunnoq, are there any in the Iliad or Odyssey, or have these texts been expurgated over the centuries?)  The common epithet {petaQ}, and even {petaQ’a’}, does appear a few times however.
In “The Klingon Hamlet” I know of these non-Okrandian examples:

  va, Do'Ha' yorIq
  Alas, poor Yorick! (TKH)

  baQa', Qovpatlh, toy'wI"a' qal je jIH
  O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! (TKH)

And finally in the TNG episode "The Mind's Eye" when Picard failed to convince Governor Vagh that the Federation wasn't supplying weapons to Kriosian rebels, Vagh shouted: "You speak the lies of a *tah-keck*!"  Picard calmly leaned forward and replied, "*Qu'vatlh guy'cha b'aka!*"  Vagh complimented him: "You swear well, Picard. You must have Klingon blood in your veins."  (Spellings from the closed captions).

Obviously the writers just strung some words together, but Vagh accepted it.


--Voragh


From: mayqel qunenoS

So we have the {jay'}, which always comes at the end of the sentence, transforming the entire sentence into an invective.

But how are the other invectives i.e. {va} {Hu'tegh} {ghay'cha'} {baQa'}, used ?

Are they placed at the end of the sentence ? Somewhere else within the sentence, or are they placed between sentences ?

qunnoq
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