[tlhIngan Hol] adverb {vaj} conjunction "then" "thus" "and then" "and thus"

[Will Martin]

This is obviously a loose translation of a poorly written Klingon sentence. {vaj} is not a conjunction in Klingon, but the words it gets translated into in English can be used as conjunctions in English. 

{vaj} is most commonly used as an adverbial on the main clause of a sentence with a {-chugh} based dependent clause. In English, it’s “if/then”, not “because”. 

There are also times when some text (a sentence or more) describes a condition, followed by a separate sentence beginning with {vaj}. The condition is essentially the combination of a conditional, plus confirmation that the condition is met in terms of meaning. In the example you show, “My father’s husband has two brothers,” is the condition. 

Think of it as, “If my father’s husband had two brothers (and he does), then I’d have two uncles (and I do).”

The problem here is that the example compresses things by omitting both the “if” and the parenthetical “and he does”, keeping in one sentence what should have been “My father’s husband has two brothers. Thus, I have two uncles.” Maybe you could use a semicolon instead of a period, since the grammatically independent sentences are tightly bound in meaning, but we have no guidance on the use of semicolons in Klingon. 

The point here is that by all we know of Klingon grammar, the comma in the Klingon sentence is wrong because we don’t combine two main, independent clauses with a comma and no conjunction. Maybe the transcript omitted an uttered {‘ej}?

Most likely, the example is intended to focus on the word used for “uncles”, since the relationship is more specific in Klingon than in English. There are more kinds of uncle in Klingon. With his attention focused on “uncle” he got sloppy with {vaj} and punctuation. 

> On Jan 24, 2022, at 7:30 AM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> (This concerns a discussion having taken place in Discord some days ago. I'm posting this here, since one can't easily follow a discussion being interrupted by a continuous feed).
> 
> In Duolingo there's the sentence: {cha' loDnI'pu' ghaj vavwI' loDnal, vaj cha' tennuS vIghaj}
> 
> Someone translated this as "My father's husband has two brothers, thus I have two uncles", and Duolingo replied "Incorrect. Answer: My father's husband has two brothers, so I have two uncles".
> 
> Then SuStel commented:
> 
> *****quote starts*****
> 
> I doubt it's an allowed option, but It would need to be and thus. So is a conjunction when used this way; thus is not. Either that, or you'd need a semi-colon before the thus, but the course generally doesn't push two independent clauses together without being in a sentence-as-object construction or conjoined.
> Hm. I wonder if it's even formally correct to use so as a conjunction like this.
> And since the Klingon doesn't have a conjunction either, it's probably just a bad example all around.
> 
> *****quote ends***
> 
> I'm not concerned with Duolingo, so I'm not asking regarding which sentence it should accept as the correct one. But what I don't understand is the following.
> 
> I was under the impression that the adverb {vaj} was more or less a way to express things like "because something happens, happens something else"; and if I remember correctly the {vaj} was all we had before the {-mo'}. The way I understand {vaj}, it is used to lead to a logical conclusion as a result of something which was already stated.
> 
> I can't understand the comment about it being a conjunction, when used in the way of the Duolingo sentence.
> 
> It seems perfectly normal to say: "my father's wife has two brothers, so I have two uncles", which would be the equivalent of "because my father's wife has two brothers, I have two uncles". Or alternatively "my fathers wife has two brothers, so (and the logical conclusion follows) I have two uncles".
> 
> --
> Dana'an 
> https://sacredtextsinklingon.wordpress.com/
> Ζεὺς ἦν, Ζεὺς ἐστίν, Ζεὺς ἔσσεται· ὦ μεγάλε Ζεῦ
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