On Sat, 17 Nov 2018 at 06:13, Daniel Dadap <daniel@dadap.net> wrote:
In Star Trek V, there’s a scene where tlha'a HoD says “'entepray''a'?” and it’s captioned in English as “Enterprise?” Surely, he wasn’t adding the type nine verb suffix “-'a'” to a noun, so what was he doing?
* Using the type one noun suffix “-'a'” to mean something like “The great Enterprise?” * Referring to the “Enterprise-A” with registry number NCC-1701-A * Momentarily forgetting proper grammar for a moment because he was so excited * Using a dialect or slang where forming questions this way is allowed * Adding the verb suffix “-'a'” to a noun, after all * Some combination of some of the above possibilities * Something else
I think the description of the {qaghwI'} in TKD is referring to this: <The apostrophe indicates a sound which is frequently uttered, but not written, in English. It is a glottal stop, the slight catch in the throat between the two syllables of "uh-oh" or "unh-unh", meaning "no". When Klingon {'} comes at the end of a word, the vowel preceding the {'} is often repeated in a very soft whisper, as if an echo. Thus, Klingon {je'} "feed" almost sounds like {je'e}, where the articulation of the first {e} is abruptly cut off by the {'}, and the second {e} is a barely audible whisper.> Klaa is making an exclamation: "The Enterprise?!" {'entepray'a} And by the way, his parents were so excited when he was born that this echo is even found in his name: {tlha'a}! -- De'vID