[tlhIngan Hol] Multiple question words / markers in a sentence

[Will Martin]

“It don’t make me no never mind.”

How many times has that been uttered? Everybody understands it. It does a perfect job of conveying meaning, but few would argue that it is grammatically correct. If I witnessed the conversation you describe, it wouldn’t make me no never mind. I wouldn’t correct anyone. That’s not the same thing as suggesting that it is grammatically correct.

When someone made HoD Qanqor a little Jewish hat (I don’t know how to spell “yah-mi-ka”) with a Klingon emblem on it, he laughed and put it on and yelled, {jIyID! jIyID!} and even though that verb did not exist in the vocabulary, everybody in the room knew exactly what he was saying. But he didn’t subsequently come to this list and insist to everybody that this was proper Klingon speech, which is kind of what you are doing.

Add that the whole reason this sentence you suggest makes sense to you is that you speak a language that has a grammatical structure for indirect quotations. So far as we know, Klingon doesn’t. Klingon has direct quotation, with the grammar laid out for us, and even though Okrand has been asked about indirect quotation, back in the day, he consistently demurred. Perhaps he has addressed this topic in my absence?

You have encoded an indirect quote from English into a Klingon sentence. It’s not a translation. It’s encoding. Any English speaker might be able to figure out what you are saying, but would a Klingon understand it? I doubt it.

{nuq legh ‘Iv} makes more sense. You are asking for two different bits of information in one sentence. Two question words would be replaced by the answer words. But when you combine the yes/no question with the question word question, you are just being grammatically weird and coming up with a story to explain it, apparently expecting the rest of us to approve of this and pretend that it’s a useful grammatical thing to know for the future as we make up future sentences.

I think you have gone a bridge too far on this one.

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.




> On Feb 18, 2019, at 1:56 AM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, 17 Feb 2019 at 21:26, Daniel Dadap <daniel at dadap.net <mailto:daniel at dadap.net>> wrote:
> 
> > On Feb 17, 2019, at 14:23, Jeffrey Clark <jmclark85 at gmail.com <mailto:jmclark85 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> > 
> > 1: bISaH’a’ — are you here?
> > 2: SaH’a’ ‘Iv? — is who here?
> 
> Ah, thanks for helping me remember. I believe bISaH'a'? / SaH'a' 'Iv? was precisely how the conversation went.
> 
> This is a double-question where the expected answer is still a question. That is, the *real* question word in {SaH'a' 'Iv} in context is {'Iv}. There's no confusion about whether you're supposed to answer a "yes/no" question, or a "who" question, because the context determines that the asker is trying to clarify to whom the first question was asked. The {-'a'} is actually expected to be part of the answer and so isn't really serving as a question word here.
> 
> As for something like {nuq legh 'Iv}, asking for two pieces of information simultaneously, I don't see why not. For example, if Horatio is related excitedly to Hamlet how Marcellus and Bernardo saw his father the king's ghost, Hamlet may very well excitedly ask {nuq legh 'Iv jay'?!}
> 
> I can't say whether Klingon grammarians would approve of either, but both seem like the sort of thing that might happen naturally in conversation and be understood, proper grammar be damned.
> 
> -- 
> De'vID
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