[tlhIngan Hol] expressing "reconcile" "I cause x and y to become friends" and {-chuqmoH} {-chuqqa'moH} {-chuqchoHmoH}

Iikka Hauhio fergusq at protonmail.com
Thu Mar 24 06:40:55 PDT 2022


We know that you can combine reflexive and causative suffixes. The suffixes can be interpreted in two ways:

-  The causative comes before the reflexive (the subject causes themselves to do something): jIQuch'eghmoH I cause myself to be happy.
- The causative comes after the reflexive (the subject causes someone else to do something): Qo'noS tuqmey muvchuqmoH qeylIS. Kahless united the tribes of Kronos. (paq'batlh)

We are interested in the second interpretation.

There is no transitive verb "be friend", so I'm not sure what verb you would attach-chuq to. Let's say we useparHa'.

parHa'chuq HoD yaS je. The captain and the officer like each other.

HoD yaS je vIparHa'chuqmoH. I cause the captain and the officer to like each other.

If you add -choH or -qa', you are emphasising that there is change in state. Again, the suffixes can be interpreted in different ways depending on context:

HoD yaS je vIparHa'chuqqa'moH. I cause again that the captain and the officer like each other. OR I cause that the captain and the other like each other again.

The correct interpretation depends on context.

Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio
------- Original Message -------
On Thursday, March 24th, 2022 at 14.48, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:

> Recently, I needed to express "reconcile", so I went with "I cause x and y to become friends".
>
> HoDvaD yaSvaD je juppu' vImojmoH
> I cause the captain and the officer to become friends
>
> The first issue with this was that without context, one couldn't know whether the captain and the officer were friends, then stopped being friends, and then I cause the reconciliation, or whether prior to my action they were never friends to start with.
>
> Luckily, since the necessary context was available, this wasn't a problem. But then I realized something else.
>
> The klingon sentence literally says "I cause the captain and the officer to become friends", but it doesn't say that I cause them to become friends with each other. So it could be also understood as me causing them to become friends with some unmentioned third party.
>
> However, just before starting going down the rabbit hole of {-chuqmoH}/{-chuqqa'moH}/{-chuqchoHmoH}, I realized that perhaps there wasn't a problem since the same ambiguity exists as well in greek/english.
>
> So, I guess the questions are:
>
> 1. Do you agree with everything so far?
> 2. Is there a way to express "I cause x and y to become friends" with the {-chuqmoH}/{-chuqqa'moH}/{-chuqchoHmoH}?
>
> --
> Dana'an
> https://sacredtextsinklingon.wordpress.com/
> Ζεὺς ἦν, Ζεὺς ἐστίν, Ζεὺς ἔσσεται· ὦ μεγάλε Ζεῦ
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