[tlhIngan Hol] excuse me, but how the jay' does -'eghmoH actually work ?

SuStel sustel at trimboli.name
Fri Sep 18 07:43:53 PDT 2020


On 9/18/2020 10:33 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
> SuStel:
>> I believe you are misusing -jaj. It's not used to suggest a course of action;
>> it's used to express a wish or desire. DaH mu'tlhegh wInuDjaj means Now may it be that we examine the sentence.
> {-jaj} vIlo'taHvIS, "now may it be that we examine the sentence"
> jIjatlhpu' vIneH. chaq muSIghpu' 'elaDya' Hol.

But you're not trying to express a hope that maybe you'll get to examine 
the sentence, which is what *-jaj* does. You're signalling to the reader 
that you are, in fact, about to examine the sentence. (One might suggest 
that a Klingon would not even go that far and would just start 
describing the sentence. I'm not going to suggest that: there are 
reasonable literary reasons to signal to a reader what the upcoming 
topic is going to be that have nothing to do with politeness or 
wheel-greasing. Similarly, a Klingon who is impressed with your business 
transactions can say *DaH matlhutlh* instead of wordlessly dragging you 
off to a bar without warning.)

I think it's obvious that you have been influenced in this by another 
language. You say it's Greek; I'll tell you that English does exactly 
the same thing: /Now let's examine the sentence./

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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