[tlhIngan Hol] Asking "why do I need to be there ?"

[Will Martin]

One of the differences between American Sign Language and Signed English is that ASL does not have a verb “to be” and doesn’t feel a loss for it. Adding it is one of the things about Signed English that annoys Deaf people.

The result is similar to Klingon. Instead of saying “I am tall,” ASL speaker would just say “Me tall, me,” or either of the single “me” word orders. Word order in ASL is not important, except when it is.

Sent from my iPad

> On Feb 22, 2019, at 5:26 PM, Daniel Dadap <daniel at dadap.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On Feb 22, 2019, at 15:05, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:
>> 
>> Isn't there anyone here who speaks arabic, or a different languages that has not to-be verb? That would interesting to find out how they do that.
> 
> Actually Arabic DOES have a verb “to be”; it’s just not used as a copula in the present tense. (It also has a different and very interesting verb-like particle used as a negative copula.) I’m very rusty in Arabic so I’m not going to embarrass myself by attempting a translation of “why do I need to be there” in Arabic, but I don’t really believe the “to be” in this English sentence truly means “to be” in an existential or identity sense.
> 
> Usually when we use pronouns as copulas in Klingon for “to be” sentences, we’re really talking about identity (tlhIngan maH; raS 'oH; HoD ghaH; yIH bIH), which is not the case in this sentence. “Why do I need to be there” is really asking why my presence is required, which is why in my Klingon suggestions I used jISaHnIS and vIpoQlu'.
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