[tlhIngan Hol] not repeating the 'e' of a sao

Will Martin willmartin2 at mac.com
Tue Aug 4 19:35:30 PDT 2020


This is a reasonable translation, well thought out, though it might be less reasonable to expect anyone to parse it in conversation, in real time. It shows how you can carefully construct sentences in Klingon that can only be correctly interpreted one way, once one has studied it for a time, though you have to track the rules down a complex track to get there. 

In particular, it relies on the most commonly forgotten prefix in canon. Even Okrand forgets {lu-}. It also relies on a pair of relative clauses both of which refer to the same head noun, which is their object, not the subject, which is valid grammar, but perhaps less common than the subject, and you chose not to mark it with {-‘e’}, which is valid, but less easily parsed. 

So, there’s an ambiguity that you have clarified using the oddest 3rd person prefix. 

It is undoubtedly valid, though it feels less translated than encoded. Follow all the rules, and it leads to only one valid translation, though you must remember a lot and follow a specific logic to get there. 

You ask much of your reader. 

Sent from my iPad

> On Aug 4, 2020, at 11:17 AM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> jIH:
> > We want to say: "the romulans helped the
> > enemy which the cardassians
> > hunted and captured". Would it be wrong
> > to write {jagh luwampu'bogh
> > 'ej lujonpu'bogh qarDaSngan luQaHpu' 
> > romuluSngan} ? Is there someone
> > here who will say that this sentence is 
> > wrong ?
> De'vID:
> > pabHa'be' 'ach "The Romulans helped the > Cardassians who hunted and captured 
> > the enemy" 'oSlaw'.
> 
> I'm afraid I can't understand this.
> 
> We have the sentence {jagh luwampu'bogh 'ej lujonpu'bogh qarDaSngan luQaHpu' romuluSngan}.
> 
> At this sentence, the {romuluSngan} is obviously plural as the {lu-} on the {luQaHpu'} indicates, and the {QaH} needs to have a singular object. Also, due to the {lu-} on each of the verbs of the {-bogh} clause, the {qarDaSngan} needs to be plural and the {jagh} singular.
> 
> I think that the only meaning which could be produced by the above is "the romulans helped the enemy which the cardassians hunted and captured"
> 
> Am I missing something here ?
> 
> Other than that, I'd love to read your opinion with regards to the original question of this thread.
> 
> ~ Qa'yIn
> 
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