<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto">The thing to keep in mind is that in Klingon, the {wIj/wI’} and {pu’/Du’/mey} determination is like linguistic gender. It’s not a literal comment as to whether a specific entity is a body part or capable of language. It is arbitrary and usually fits the general guideline of body part/language capable/other. That doesn’t mean every noun always lives up to the guideline. <div><br></div><div>If you have a noun and you don’t know its typical gender, use the guideline, but if you have a noun with an established gender, like De’wI’mey, which Okrand has given us, you don’t abandon the known gender because of a specific instance. It doesn’t matter if a specific entity is assigned to a noun that doesn’t fit the guideline, that noun keeps the known gender. <br><br>Someone who dearly loves their pair of parrots may use {-pu’}, but everyone, including the speaker knows that it’s grammatically wrong. <br><br><div dir="ltr">Sent from my iPhone. <br><div>charghwI’</div></div><div dir="ltr"><br>On May 17, 2019, at 2:18 AM, Rhona Fenwick <<a href="mailto:qeslagh@hotmail.com">qeslagh@hotmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">
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<div>ghItlhpu' mayqel:</div>
> A Star Trek script writer, comes to you and says: I want you to<br>
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<div class="PlainText">> translate in klingon, the phrase "kahless, my light".<br>
> Suppose that the "my light" is used metaphorically; would you use<br>
> {qeylIS, tamghaywIj} or {qeylIS, tamghaywI'} ?</div>
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<div class="PlainText">Others have given good canon-based answers that basically show the most common practice among Klingons is to use the suffixes grammatically appropriate to the literal meaning of the noun - so,
<b>tamghaywIj</b> - but that context or individual preference may play a part. Personally,
<i>a priori</i> I'd prefer <b>tamghaywIj</b>.<br>
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<div class="PlainText">With that said, context might send me in the other direction if necessary. For instance, in my translation of Shota Rustaveli's
<i>The Man in the Panther Skin</i>, for instance, I've run up against this problem hard. In Rustaveli's original poem, formulaic metaphors are extremely common, but often obtuse to the point of incomprehensibility: Georgian
<span><i>sada indoni brol-vardsa / sarven gišrisa sarita</i> literally means </span>
<span>"where the Indians surround the crystal and rose with arbour of jet"</span>, but it's actually a complex metaphor for the beauty of Avtandil's beloved Tinatin. Because this happens so very often in the text, I decided to break with the more common practice
and help the reader out by occasionally making use of prescriptively "incorrect" affixes as a device to signal some of these metaphors overtly.
<i>lomo</i> "o (my) lion!" (referring to Avtandil) I rendered in one place as <b>
'o 'IwwI'</b> "o my blood!", and in another place I rendered "narcissuses" (referring to Tinatin's eyes) as
<b>SeparDu'Daj</b> "her <i>separ</i>-stones". However, this practice was a contextual decision made for this specific text and for very specific reasons. I wouldn't counsel a learner to do so as a matter of course.<br>
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<div class="PlainText">QeS 'utlh<br>
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</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><span>_______________________________________________</span><br><span>tlhIngan-Hol mailing list</span><br><span><a href="mailto:tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org">tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org</a></span><br><span><a href="http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org">http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org</a></span><br></div></blockquote></div></body></html>