On Mon, 11 Apr 2022 at 13:51, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
There's a chancellor who goes by the names of ghawran, torgh, valQIS, and several other names as well.
I want to say "they call the chancellor as ghawran, torgh, valQIS, and by several other names".
So I write:
QangvaD ghawran, torgh, valQIS, latlhmey je luponglu'
Or perhaps:
QangvaD ghawran, torgh, valQIS, latlh pongmey je luponglu'
Are the above two klingon sentences correct? Or do these sentences actually say that "they call the chancellor ghawran, torgh, valQIS, and they call him {latlhmey}/{latlh pongmey} as well"?
Does the presence of the {latlhmey}/{latlh pongmey} in the "name slot" of the {XvaD Y ponglu'} construction necessarily mean that they are to be understood as actual names, instead of normal words?
There's no problem with interpreting them as normal words meaning "others, other names". A number of known Klingon names are common words, and they haven't caused any serious problems. I expect that, were some Klingon to name their child {latlhmey} for some weird reason, and you wanted to say "they're called ghawran, torgh, valQIS, and 'latlhmey' ", you'd have to indicate that by marking the name {latlhmey} somehow when writing in Klingon (like I did in English with quotation marks). Also, consider the expressions {latlh je}, {latlh latlh latlh}, and {taH taH taH} (which were revealed at qep'a' cha'maH javDIch). -- De'vID