[tlhIngan Hol] bIQ qoD Dujmaj SuD

[Daniel Dadap]

Okay, I think I know what to do, but I have some follow-up questions:

>> On Jun 4, 2018, at 10:26, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
>> On 6/4/2018 10:26 AM, Daniel Dadap wrote:
>> The phrase “vengDaq jIboghpu'bogh” idly popped into my mind this morning and naturally it morphed into this. Please let me know about any unforgivable grammatical or lexical errors and I will do my best to correct them while preserving the flow of the song:
> 
> This is the old ship in which I fled problem. The head noun of a relative clause MUST be either the subject or object of the clause.
> 
> Without regard to meter or rhyme, in the town where I was born would probably best be expressed as boghpu'ghach vengwIj in my birth-town.
> 
>> vengHomDaq jIboghpu'bogh,
>> bIQ'a' lengbogh loD tu'lu'.
>> maHvaD yInDaj lut nuja',
>> Daq bIQ Dujmey Hoch qaSpu'.
> 
> qaS doesn't take an object. The thing that happens is the subject.
> 

Oops, right.
> You failed to include a locative marker to tell us where this happened.
> 

HIvqa' veqlargh! I saw the “Daq” after I wrote it and forgot that I was using it as a noun.

> When modifying one noun with another, the modifying noun comes first. It doesn't act like an adjectival verb, coming last. It's bIQ Dujmey Daqplace of water ships, water ships' place, not Daq bIQ Dujmey.
> 

Yeah, there’s an analogous construction in Semitic languages that has the word order reversed compared to Klingon, and I’m always finding myself doing the noun-noun backwards. I’m mildly amused that I got it only half backwards this time (CAB instead of CBA or the correct ABC.)

> bIQ Dujmey DaqDaq qaSpu' Hoch
> Everything happened in the place of water ships.
> 

How about:

mungwIj vengHom Dap loD qan,
bIQ'a' lengchu'pu' ghaH net Sov.
maHvaD yInDaj lut nuja',
bIQ qoD Dujmey DaqDaq qaS Hoch.

> 
>> vaj bIQDaq jul mave'taH,
> 
> I think what you're going for is vaj bIQDaq julDaq mave' So we travel on a mission in the water toward the sun. The word jul needs some kind of reason for being there.
> 

So this is probably a very Indo-European-centric view, but I always read places with a locative marker as something like a “locative case” and places without one as an “accusative case”. I know that’s probably not accurate, but that’s how I usually try to figure whether or not I want a -Daq. In this sentence I’m trying to communicate that jul is the destination, and bIQ is where mave' is taking place, but if they both have -Daq, what prevents one from reading it as “on the sun in the water”? (i.e., the water contains a sun, and we are traveling with a purpose on that sun.)

Would -vaD be a wrong suffix to distinguish the roles of bIQ and jul in this sentence? e.g.: bIQDaq julvaD mave'.

> I don't think you really want -taH; the line So we sailed up to the sun / Till we found a sea of green isn't about the continuousness of the journey, going on before the time of this action and going on after the time of this action. It's just a statement of what the action was.
> 

Sure, I mainly added -taH for rhythm and assonance; I can just as easily say mave' maH.

>> bIQ'a' SuD wISamDI' mamev.
> 
> I know you're concerned for meter and assonance, but this really needs to be mamevpu', and probably wISampu'DI'. You're talking about an action that is completed in the time in which the action happens.
> 

Okay, I think I can squeeze the perfective suffixes in without too much awkwardness.

>> 'ej yu'egh bIngDaq maHtaH,
>> bIQ qoD DujmajDaq maHegh…
> 
> Again, I recognize your poetic constraints, but in prose, and assuming we can use bIQ qoD Duj as submarine, this would be simple as 'ej yu'egh bIngDaq bIQ qoD Duj SuD wIDab And we inhabit our SuD submarine beneath the waves.
> 

Yeah, I’m not going for total fidelity here, as long as the imagery remains somewhat the same I’d prefer to err on the side of making it sound nice.

Perhaps DujmajDaq maHegh is overly poetic (it does seem fairly Klingon), but in any case if we are adding a perfective suffix to mamev, it’ll need to change:

(vaj?) bIQ('a'?)Daq jul(Daq? vaD?) mamev maH,
bIQ SuD wISampu'DI' mamevpu'.
'ej yu'egh bIngDaq maHtaH,
bIQ qoD Dujmaj SuD wIDabchu'!

(The words/affixes in parentheses may or may not appear in whatever combination is most grammatically and metrically favorable.)

>> bIQ qoD Duj SuD Hoch maH wIDabbejtaH,
> 
> Let's just drop the Hoch, okay? English has a special phrase we all which syntactically means exactly the same thing as we, but it includes a connotation of completeness, like there's no one left who isn't counted. Klingon doesn't have this. There's no evidence that Klingon say Hoch maH or maH Hoch or anything else to mean this, and grammatical analysis of this phrase doesn't lead to English we all. Grammatically, I'd be more inclined to use Hochmaj our allness as a third-person noun before those. But that sounds silly too, even if it has the virtue of making grammatical sense. Or use a -chu' to indicate completeness.

The Hoch was there more for meter than to try to communicate the “all” in “we all”. This works just as well for me metrically:

bIQ qoD Dujmaj SuD wIDabchu'taH maH

>> DujmajDaq maHtaH, bIQDaq majaHtaH.
>> bIQ qoD Duj SuD Hoch maH wIDabbejtaH,
>> DujmajDaq maHtaH, bIQDaq majaHtaH.
> 
> An interesting strategy to spread out the concepts where the English original just repeats phrases.

English original? You must not have realized that I’m trying to reconstruct the original Klingon lyrics from the Terran adaptation made by a band whose name originated as a mispronunciation of “batlh”.

>> naDev chaHtaH jupma' je,
> 
> Poetry again. In prose this would be better as 'ej tIjpu' juppu'ma' And our friends have boarded. This definitely needs to be an 'ej, not a je.
> 

The je is meant to communicate that we are here, and our friends are here too. Would it work better if I reverse the clauses in the last line of the chorus?

...
bIQDaq majaHtaH, DujmajDaq maHtaH.

naDev chaHtaH jupma' je
...

>> Sumqu' je latlhpu' tu'lu'.
> 
> You've got two main verbs in this sentence; it doesn't work. The je is a bit wrong too, since you're not repeating noun or verbs from one sentence to another. I'd just drop any and or also; the English doesn't use one. Maybe in prose it would be jIlmaj chaH latlh law''e'.
> 
Oh right, I keep treating tu'lu' as a fixed phrase without regard to the actual verb tu' it’s built around.

I like your suggestion (especially because rhyming “law''e'” with “je” instead of “tu'lu'” with “muchchoHlu'pu'” better matches the rhyme scheme of the Terran adaptation), but I would like another syllable or three; jIlma' chaH latlhpu' law''e'? (I’m not familiar with what rule allows 'e' on law' here; could you explain it please?)

>> 'ej vogh QoQ muchchoHlu'pu'…
> 
> The vogh is there for a syllable?

Yes, precisely. DaH or any other monosyllabic word would work just as well here if vogh is awkward.

>> [ QoQ muchlu'taH ]
>> 
>> bIQ qoD Duj SuD Hoch maH wIDabbejtaH,
>> DujmajDaq maHtaH, bIQDaq majaHtaH.
>> bIQ qoD Duj SuD Hoch maH wIDabbejtaH,
>> DujmajDaq maHtaH, bIQDaq majaHtaH.
>> 
>> [ tujqu'choH QuQ. ]
>> [ nughoS jagh. ]
>> [ chay' jura? ]
>> [ batlh maHegh! ]
>> [ cha yIghuS! ]
>> [ So'wI' yIchu'Ha'! ]
> 
> chomonmoHpu'.

}}}:-)

I realized that I forgot [ Qu'vatlh ] and [ baH ] here; with the addition of those two phrases, there are exactly enough phrases to use one per measure of the interlude.

>> 'ej ngeDtaHvIS yInmeymaj,
>> Hoch 'utbogh Dochmey wIghaj.
> 
> DIghaj
> 

Grr, those verb prefixes will do me in one day; thanks for catching that.

>> SuDqu' chal, 'ej SuD bIQ je,
> 
> SuDqu' is green. I wouldn't use je here, since you're saying that one thing is SuD and the other is SuDqu'; that's not an also. The song is making a contrast between two things by saying how they have different colors. In ordinary Klingon language, sky and sea have       the same color, though they are different shades of that color. If you want to maintain the contrast, you have to talk about shades, in which case you definitely can't use je.
> 
> I might change it up a bit and use SuD chal 'ach SuDqu' bIQ The sky is SuD but the sea is very SuD.
> 

Okay, I really only added the qu' for meter here, not realizing that SuDqu' is a particular shade of SuD. I was just trying to say that the sky is very SuD, and the sea is SuD as well.

In English the sky being blue and the sea being green is a contrast, but I think it more interesting for the Klingon version to point out the similarity of them being the same color, especially since it’s also the color of our submarine.

I can fill that syllable with 'oH to avoid making SuDqu' and SuD, e.g. either:

SuD 'oH chal, 'ej SuD bIQ je,
bIQ qoD DujmajDaq maHegh…

or:

SuD 'oH chal, 'ej SuD bIQ'a',
bIQ qoD Dujmaj SuD wIDabba'!

Anyway, let me know what you think of the above and I’ll put together an updated version.

>> bIQ qoD DujmajDaq maHegh…
>> 
>> bIQ qoD Duj SuD Hoch maH wIDabbejtaH,
>> DujmajDaq maHtaH, bIQDaq majaHtaH.
>> bIQ qoD Duj SuD Hoch maH wIDabbejtaH,
>> DujmajDaq maHtaH, bIQDaq majaHtaH.
>> 
>> (If the lyrics don’t make it obvious, sing this to the tune of “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles. The dialog taken from the beginning of “Conversational Klingon” is meant to take the place of the muffled speech heard before the final verse; if anybody ever ends up recording this, feel free to substitute other dialog, or cut out some lines to make it fit better, depending on the amount of time in the intervening measures between the chorus and verse.)
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
> http://trimboli.name
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