On Wed, Mar 22, 2017 at 8:29 PM, Felix Malmenbeck <felixm@kth.se> wrote:

- talk about, discuss (verb)


Example sentences:

(1) "I enjoy talking about Klingon."

(2) "We spoke about the fact that bicycles are evil."

(3) "What are y'all talking about?"

(4) "I visited the restaurant that you told me about."

(5) "Why is our CO so unwilling to talk about the space station that our enemies destroyed?"

(6) "She refuses to talk about the project she's working on."

(7) "That blowhard talks about himself too much."

(8) "Those lovers talk about each other too much."

I'm not suggesting these are the ideal (or necessarily even acceptable) way to express your sentences, but lately I've been considering how sentences could be made more concise with the topic marker {-'e'}, which seems underused (by humans, anyway). For many situations, it seems like a shorter alternative to tacking {bopbogh...} onto the object of consideration. So can you indicate the topic of conversation this way before an intransitive verb of speech? How do these sentences strike you?
 
(1) tlhIngan Hol'e' jIjatlh 'e' vItIv.
(2) mIgh qam Do Dujmey. ngoDvam'e' majatlh.
(3) nuq'e' SujatlhtaH?
(4) Qe'e' choja'ta'bogh vISuchta'.
(5) qatlh tengchaH'e' luSangta'bogh jaghpu'ma' jatlhqangbe'qu' ra'wI'ma'?
(6) jInmol'e' turtaHbogh mujatlhQo'.
(7) tlhoy bop'egh 'eDjenvetlh jatlhtaHvIS.
(8) tlhoy bopchuq parmaqqayvetlh jatlhtaHvIS.

For the last two, due to their reflexive nature, I couldn't see how to use the topic marker without repeating {'eDjen} or {parmaqqay} (though just because of my English sense of style: I seem to recall from TKD something to the effect that such repetition isn't bad style in Klingon). It seems to me that {bop} <be about, be concerned with> can take a person as its subject as well as the usual {bom}, {lut}, etc. If not, I'd cheerfully change {bop} to {buS} or {qIm} or somesuch.

~mIp'av