[tlhIngan Hol] 'eSpanya' QISmaS (Beginner's text and questions)

[luis.chaparro at web.de]

Thank you for your helpful comments, De'vID and Voragh!

De'vID:

>> 2. I wanted to use *'eSpanya''e'* as topic, but then I couldn't decide where I should place it. It's a noun with a Type 5 suffix. Time expressions come first. So I placed it after the time expression. However, my tendency was to say it at the beginning, before the time expression. Would that be right / possible?
 
> Star Trek VI had Chancellor Gorkon yell {cheng'e' DaH Sam!} "Find CHANG now!", so it's at least possible to have the topic fronted before the time expression. 

I knew the sentence, but since *DaH* is an adverb, I'm not sure if this is an example of a topic before an adverb or a topic before a time expression? The last one meaning we could place a topic at the very beginning of a sentence (what makes sense to me, but doesn't mean it makes sense to Klingons too :-)

De'vID:

> There's yet another way which is used in non-military contexts, and in which interplanetary communications are not a concern, involving the expression {N-logh Qoylu'pu'}, which is also explained in the newsgroup message above.

Thank you for the link, I had totally forgotten the option with *Qoylu'pu'* (and, by the way, I've noticed I've misspelled the verb *Qoy* in my text). In the newsgroup message we read that this way to say the time also works with the 24-hour system (which is common in Europe), so I guess we can say for example *wa'maH chorghlogh Qoylu'pu'*. Should I say for midnight *cha'maH loSlogh Qoylu'pu'* or something with *zero*? And is there a way to tell the minutes when using *Qoylu'pu'*?

As an aside: do we know how to ask for the time when we tell it as hundreds?

Voragh:

> In this case I would say {'eSpanya'ngan lurDech}. I'm not sure whether countries (i.e. politico-geographical entities) have traditions - in either English or Klingon - or if the people (or possibly cultures) in them do.

(...)

> If deciding whether to use {'eSpanya'} or {'eSpanya'ngan} with a noun throws you for a temporal loop, you can always say simply {'eSpanya'Daq ...}

:-) Well, my problem was actually how to say *Christmas in Spain* as the title of my text. Since we cannot use *-Daq* with the first name of a noun-noun construction, I was looking for other possibilities, and then I forgot *-Daq* when I was writing the text.

When I think about these noun-noun constructions maybe I'm a bit influenced by my native language (where such constructions are almost non-existent). In Spanish there is nothing strange if I say *Las tradiciones de España* (Spain's traditions) if I want to focus on the geographical or historical-cultural aspect, rather than on the people.

Voragh:

> That being said,

> ... 'ach 'eSpanya'ngan lurDech 'oHbejbe'.
> ... but this isn't really a Spanish tradition.

I used *bIH* because I was referring to the *QISmaS Sor*, which was plural in the text. That's similar to the problem with */Bethlehem/ velqa'mey nu' 'oH lurDechmaj'e'*. The sentence of the PB quoted by De'vID (*wa' Dol bIH qa''e' porgh'e' je*) seems to suggest that the pronoun agrees with the subject, but I think it's better, as De'vID says, to avoid these constructions if possible.