[tlhIngan Hol] quotation with {jatlhbogh nuv}

[Will Martin]

I wholeheartedly agree, plus add the reminder that relative clauses are generally less versatile in Klingon than in English. There’s nothing wrong with generally using them, but in English, we extend them to a higher degree of grammatical complexity than in Klingon.

As a general rule, if you wonder whether or not a Relative Clause can be stretched to do the thing you are considering doing with it, it would probably be better to make the Relative Clause a separate sentence, as SuStel has skillfully demonstrated.

It’s a classic example of the more general rule that Klingon speakers will tend to express the meaning of long, complex English sentences by using more shorter sentences of less convoluted, inter-linked grammar. The links are less formally made among adjacent sentences, each providing context for the other.

Having less grammatical redundancy and stricter rules pertaining to word order, Klingon works better when each sentence carries less burden, and complex meaning is distributed among something more akin to a paragraph instead of a sentence.

Remember in school when they defined a sentence as the unit of grammar expressing “a single complete thought”? Often English ignores that guideline and tosses a pile of complete thoughts into one sentence. Klingon? Not so much.

This is not a hard and fast, proscribed rule. It’s just good practice.

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.

> On Jun 2, 2020, at 9:37 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> On 6/2/2020 9:17 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
>> In english we can say: "yadda yadda yadda, and then appeared a man
>> saying I'm kahless".
>> 
>> Could we do something similar in klingon, by writing: {yaDDa yaDDa
>> yaDDa, 'ej ghIq narghpu' jatlhbogh nuv, qeylIS jIH} ?
>> 
>> I feel there's something weird in the klingon version of that
>> sentence, but I don't know exactly what that is.
> I wouldn't do that. I prefer to avoid building sentence-as-object constructions out of dependent clauses.
> 
> ghIq nargh nuv; jatlh qeylIS jIH.
> And then a person appears and says he's Kahless.
> 
> Remember that Klingons don't mind jamming related ideas next to each other to demonstrate their link.
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
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