It really helps to see a complete sentence. Fragments might look fine when presented individually, but become impenetrable when placed in a sentence. The fragment you present looks fine to me, in isolation, though having a dependent clause attached to a relative clause is a lot easier to interpret as a fragment than it probably would be in a larger sentence, where the dependent clause could easily be assumed to apply to the main clause, completely missing your intended idea. I’m not really certain that relative clauses can carry dependent clauses, probably for this very reason. Relative clauses exist in Klingon, but it’s a good idea to not burden them with too much complexity. Any time you feel tempted to do that, you probably should reconsider breaking the idea down into multiple sentences, instead of using the relative clause to pack what really should be a whole sentence into a larger sentence, expecting that larger sentence to carry the weight without collapsing. The core of the problem is that if you follow a logical process of assembling simple elements into a complex whole, the receiver of your communication might not be able to decrypt the result with anything close to the clarity that could have been achieved by separating out the elements and presenting them in a larger context with simpler grammar. It comes down to this: Who has to do the heavy lifting? You, the person who wishes to communicate a set of ideas to another person, or the person you are trying to communicate with? If you do more work to express something clearly, then the recipient won’t have to work so hard understanding what you’ve said. I juggle. People think the hard thing about juggling is catching the balls. They don’t understand. The hard thing about juggling is tossing the balls with consistent accuracy in order to make them easy to catch. Make your sentences easy to catch.

On Mar 15, 2022, at 8:59 AM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:

 I want to say:

"A god who protects women while they are giving birth"

So I write:

boghmoHtaHvIS be'pu' Qanbogh Qun'e'

Is this correct? Something seems strange but I can't understand what.

-- Dana'an https://sacredtextsinklingon.wordpress.com/ Ζεὺς ἦν, Ζεὺς ἐστίν, Ζεὺς ἔσσεται· ὦ μεγάλε Ζεῦ _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

On second thought, I think that this looks more like “God, who protects, while women are causing [someone] to be born,” at least as much as it means “God, who protects women, while [someone] is causing [someone] to be born.” What you seem to want to express is actually a nested relative clause: God, who protects women, who give birth… while they give birth. I don’t think you can nest relative clauses, especially since each relative clause has a different head noun. It is true that you also want to convey that the protection happens while the birth happens, but you definitely seem to want to suggest that the god is protecting women, and that’s not what your Klingon sentence says. It just notes that whomever or whatever god is protecting is happening while women are giving birth. And even then, you still have the problem of what it looks like in a complete sentence. boghmoHtaHvIS be’pu’ Qanbogh Qun’e’ vIvuv. I read that as, “I respect a protective God while women give birth.” It’s not clear that this god is protecting the women, and I don’t especially respect this god at other times. My respect happens during the birth. I could also read it as “I respect a god who protects women, while somebody gives birth.” I don’t know who is giving birth, and I don’t respect this god any other time. The issue is that {-taHvIS} makes {boghmoHtaHvIS be’pu’} a separate dependent clause, telling you the time anchor of some other verb. It’s a duration. Unlike {Qun’e’} it is not a head noun of any relative clause, so as a noun, it works with one verb. Only a Head Noun of a Relative Clause functions with two verbs at the same time. So, either the woman is giving birth, or the woman is being protected by the god. She can’t be both at the same time. Again, I recommend that you do the extra lifting to make your sentences easier to catch.

On Mar 15, 2022, at 8:59 AM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:

 I want to say:

"A god who protects women while they are giving birth"

So I write:

boghmoHtaHvIS be'pu' Qanbogh Qun'e'

Is this correct? Something seems strange but I can't understand what.

-- Dana'an https://sacredtextsinklingon.wordpress.com/ Ζεὺς ἦν, Ζεὺς ἐστίν, Ζεὺς ἔσσεται· ὦ μεγάλε Ζεῦ _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org