[tlhIngan Hol] Don't be alarmed, now.

[SuStel]

On 10/31/2021 7:38 PM, Alan Anderson wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 31, 2021 at 6:12 PM Will Martin <willmartin2 at mac.com> wrote:
>
>     If we had a verb for “be alarmed”, you could say, {yI-[be
>     alarmed]Qo’}, but the verb is {ghum} — “alarm, sound an alarm”. In
>     a Statement, we could build “be alarmed” out of {glumlu’}, but
>     when you put the {yI-} on it, the subject is expected to be the
>     First Person.
>
>
> Or you could say {yay'} "be shocked, dumbfounded" or {bIt} "be 
> nervous, uneasy". The English "be alarmed" doesn't really have 
> anything to do with alarms.

Agreed. *ghum* refers to becoming aware of something; /alarmed/ has to 
do with an emotional state.

I would have no trouble reading *bItqu' *as /be alarmed./ Nervousness or 
uneasiness, taken to an extreme, could be a state of alarm.


> {yI-} is *not* a First Person prefix, but I will assume you know it's 
> Second Person subject and just misspoke.
>
>     Well, the statement “I am alarmed,” would be {vIghumlu’} or
>     “-indefinite subject- alarms me."
>
>     Does the imperative prefix do the same {-lu’} trick pointing to
>     the object instead of the subject? Is {yIghumlu’} valid for “Be
>     alarmed!”?
>
>
> I'm going to have to go with an unequivocal "No".  The indefinite 
> subject suffix doesn't "point" the meaning of a word to anything that 
> the word doesn't normally point to. It *always* means the subject is 
> indefinite. That is completely incompatible with imperatives, which 
> *always* have a second-person subject.

Agreed. Imperative impersonal subject makes no semantic sense in Klingon.

I might translate this as *yIbItqu'Qo'* or *yIbItHa'qu''eghmoH.*

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name
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