[tlhIngan Hol] Meaning of *ghaytanHa'*

[SuStel]

On 9/16/2021 9:11 AM, Will Martin wrote:
> To be honest, when I see {ghaytanHa’ QapDI’ SuvtaH}, I read it as 
> “It’s unlikely that he continues fighting when he wins.” In other 
> words, he fights, then he wins, then he stops fighting.

Adverbials generally appear to attach to individual clauses, so I don't 
know if this interpretation is possible. That is to say, to get your 
meaning, you'd need to say, *QapDI', ghaytanHa' SuvtaH.* But this 
touches upon questions of whether Klingon allows things like 
parenthetical insertions in the middle of sentences.


> For your intended initial meaning, I’d say something more like 
> {Qap’a’? SaHbe’. SuvtaH.} "Will he win? He doesn’t care. He’s always 
> fighting."
>
> Remember that in Klingon, it is unnecessary to pack too much meaning 
> into one sentence if it can be more clearly said broken out into 
> multiple sentences, strung together by the thread of the story; the 
> context shared by all the sentences.

Okrand was also somewhat constrained by a verse structure. Unlike most 
of /paq'batlh,/ the English original and the Klingon translation don't 
line up according to stanza in this section, showing some strain in 
trying to cover every sense in the original.

In this case, however, I don't see too much information being packed in 
here inappropriately. If I may add some clarifying punctuation: 
*ghaytanHa' QapDI', SuvtaH.*/When it is unlikely that he will win, he 
keeps fighting./ In other words, he goes on fighting against the odds. 
It's all there, and it's in a fairly simple form already.


-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name
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