[tlhIngan Hol] Apollo mission sentence

[Will Martin]

Excellent analysis of a very complex sentence.

The only thing I’d add for educational purposes is that because of the word order for Klingon sentences, it’s really only context that associates the locative with the purpose clause. Grammatically, it could apply to either the purpose clause or “while” clause, or the main clause, but context tells us that the command module never made it to the moon, nor did 1/3 of the space travelers, so the locative only applies to the landing, which is the purpose of the mission. It’s the “in order to land on the Moon” mission, translated as “first manned lunar landing mission".

It’s interesting that the Klingon translation doesn’t actually say that it’s a manned mission. They could have explicitly added {nuv} or some such as subject of {SaqmeH}. It could have been more explicit, like: 

{tera’ jar Soch, DIS wa’ Hut jav Hut, maSDaq SaqmeH Human Qu’ wa’DIch HochHom turlu’taHvIS, wej logh lengwI’pu’ pa’mey ‘oH Apollo wa’maH wa’ ra’ghom bobcho Columbia’e’.}

"Earth month seven, year 1969, while carrying out most of the first in-order-that-a-human-lands-on-the-moon mission, the Apollo 11 command module Columbia was the three space travelers' rooms.” 

It’s even more interesting since, if you are familiar with the command module, you probably would have considered it to be one room, avoiding the whole issue of whether the main verb should have been {‘oH} or {bIH}.

So, the time stamp applies to all the clauses, while the locative applies only to the purpose clause. And they left off a significant word. Not a bad translation, though.

Meanwhile, that one missing word…

Yeah, I can hear it now:

“That’s one small step. One giant leap.”

It wouldn’t have made much sense without mentioning that a person did it.

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.




> On May 1, 2019, at 11:34 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> On 5/1/2019 11:23 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
>> Read the Ca'Non sentence from the "Smithsonian Go Figure app":
>> 
>> {tera jar Soch, DIS wa Hut jav
>> Hut, maSDaq SaqmeH Qu' wa'DIch
>> HochHom turlu'taHvIS, wej logh
>> lengwIpu pa'mey 'oH Apollo wamaH wa' ra'ghom bobcho Columbia'e'}
>> 
>> "Apollo 11 Command Module, Columbia, was the living quarters for the three-person crew during most of the first manned lunar landing mission in July 1969".
>> 
>> The {Qu' wa'DIch} is obviously the subject of {SaqmeH}. It can't be the {Qu' wa'DIch HochHom} since the goal wasn't for "almost all of the mission to land on the moon".
>> 
>> And then we have the {HochHom turlu'taHvIS} which is used to express the "during most of the first manned lunar landing mission".
>> 
>> However, since the subject of the {SaqmeH} is only the {Qu' wa'DIch}, shouldn't there be a comma right after it ?
> maSDaq SaqmeH Qu' wa'DIch HochHom turlu'taHvIS
> while most of the first moon-landing mission was being carried out
> 
> This is a single while clause.
> 
> X turlu'taHvIS
> while one does X
> 
> The X is a noun phrase, maSDaq SaqmeH Qu' wa'DIch HochHom most of the first mission-to-land-on-the-moon.
> 
> A SaqmeH Qu' is a landing mission, a mission for landing. Remember that purposes clauses can be attached to nouns that are not the subject of that clause. Qu' is not the subject of SaqmeH.
> 
> If that mission happens at the moon, it is a maSDaq SaqmeH Qu' landing mission on the moon. The locative is added to the verb as usual. The fact that this verb is part of a dependent clause is irrelevant.
> 
> It's the first moon-landing mission, maSDaq SaqmeH Qu' wa'DIch.
> 
> We're only talking about most of the mission: maSDaq SaqmeH Qu' wa'DIch HochHom.
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
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