[tlhIngan Hol] asking what am I ?

[SuStel]

On 1/8/2020 9:55 AM, Will Martin wrote:
> In English, we have one “to be” verb for identity or to link a subject 
> to an adjective. In Klingon, the adjective IS THE VERB. You don’t use 
> both forms of the English “to be” in a single Klingon sentence, and 
> you don’t confuse which kind of “to be” question you are asking in 
> Klingon.

I agree, and I was going to post something similar. The problem with 
this question is it is being supposed that /What am I? Stupid?/ can be 
translated literally and still mean the same thing in Klingon. In 
English, you can answer /I am stupid/ to the question /What am I?/ In 
Klingon, *jIQIp* is not an answer to the question *nuq jIH* or even *'Iv 
jIH.* *jIQIp* is answering a question more like *chay' vIDellu'* or *nuq 
vIta'.* It simply would never occur to a Klingon to ask *nuq jIH* and to 
get an answer *jIQIp.* You're asking for a noun and getting a verb.

Having a quality in Klingon is an action.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/attachments/20200108/ea02f5c1/attachment-0016.htm>