[tlhIngan Hol] Expressing "as if nothing happened"

nIqolay Q niqolay0 at gmail.com
Fri Feb 15 08:47:12 PST 2019


You can probably lose one of the {'e'}s. {chomaghta'. vIlIj 'e'
DapIH'a'...} It's not unheard of to have an unstated third-person object
that refers to the situation in general. "You betrayed me. Do you expect me
to forget it?" (Don't forget the {-'a'} if you're writing a question.)

You might also find a way to use {ghet} "pretend" to get across the notion
of "behave as if something were true". {chomaghta'. qaS pagh 'e' vIghet
DaneH'a'?} "You betrayed me. Do you want me to pretend nothing happened?"
(This also removes an {'e'} by using the one verb that doesn't take it.)

There's also the time-honored tradition of appealing to Klingon cultural
mores as a reason to rephrase it entirely and remove the question.
{chomaghta'. qaS pagh 'e' vIghetQo'.} "You betrayed me. I won't pretend
that nothing happened."

There's a line {naDev qaS wanI' ramqu'} from Star Trek III and TKD,
translated as "There's nothing happening here" but literally "Very
insignificant events happen here." So perhaps a better idiom for "nothing
happened" is something like {ramqu' wanI'}. {chomaghta'. ramqu' wanI' 'e'
vIghet DaneH'a'?} "You betrayed me. Do you want me to pretend the event was
utterly insignificant?"

Also, stringing together two {'e'}s is probably fine as long as the
sentences aren't very complicated otherwise. (It'd probably still be
grammatical even if the sentences were complicated, but then it'd be hard
to read.) I can't recall any instances in canon, though.

On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 10:02 AM mayqel qunenoS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:

> If you wanted to say "you've betrayed me, and you expect me to behave
> as if nothing happened ?", how would you say it ?
>
> The best option I can think of, is perhaps something like {chomaghta';
> 'e' vIlIj, 'e' DapIH, jIvangtaHvIS ?}
>
> But I can't say, that I like stringing together two {'e'}s.
>
> Does someone have a better idea ?
>
> ~mayqel *I love maltz* qunen'oS
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