[tlhIngan Hol] {ghIq} {ngugh} and time adverbs with time stamps

mayqel qunen'oS mihkoun at gmail.com
Sat Oct 30 04:43:46 PDT 2021


SuStel:
> Your trouble comes about because in English (I dunno about Greek) then can
> be used as a coordinating conjunction when it means next. The phrase and
then
> is basically a conjunction, so you want to put it before anything else.
> But in Klingon. *ghIq* is an adverbial, not a conjunction, so you mustn't
expect it to
> obey the grammar of English *and then.*
charghwI':
> The “and then” sequence phrase you want is primarily useful to sequence
two
> things that occur within the same boundaries of duration used by the
> sentence, as in “Monday, we acquired the ship and then the war started.”
Both
> happened on Monday, but we acquired the ship before the war started.

When I was writing the initial post, I couldn't understand what it was
exactly which made the {povjaj ghIq taghpu' noH} seem ugly.

But reading your comments, I understood what was going on. Indeed you're
right; in English -as well as in Greek- the "then" is usually heard/meant
as "and then". So, in the {povjaj ghIq taghpu' noH}, I was
reading/understanding "On Tuesday, and then the war started".

SuStel:
> If you think about *ghIq* as meaning "the thing that happened next was
that,"
> then you should find no problem imagining a time expression before it.
*povjaj *
*> ghIq taghpu' noH*
* On Tuesday, the thing that happened next was that *
*> the war started.*

Yes, indeed; this solves the problem. Thanks!

charghwI':
> Okrand has clearly stated that in many cases one sentence
> in English would be split up into two or more sentences in Klingon.

I can understand that; I know that the way Klingon handles something which
is difficult/complex is by breaking it down into smaller/easier sentences.
And it's something I usually do too, since almost anything which goes into
my website is pretty complex, which needs some serious recasting in order
to be able to become a Klingon sentence.

But there are cases, in which for a number of reasons, you can't rephrase..

It's easy to say "rephrase" whenever you're dealing with a single sentence
one has written in a post inquiring about grammar. But assume you're
writing a looong text.. Perhaps you've already written four sentences "of
the same kind" in a row, and you want the next sentence to be different, so
that the reader won't be bored/irritated by seeing let's say six sentences
in a row, each going like:

adverb - verbbogh 'ej verbbogh noun - verb - meH'ed noun

There are times you just can't rephrase, and I think that in such cases, it
is necessary for one to know every alternative valid option.

--
Dana'an
https://sacredtextsinklingon.wordpress.com/
Ζεὺς ἦν, Ζεὺς ἐστίν, Ζεὺς ἔσσεται· ὦ μεγάλε Ζεῦ
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