"The Duke yet lives that Henry shall depose..."
This came up in a conversation and I started wondering how the original Klingon version looks like. If you're not familiar with Shakespeare, the sentence is ambiguous. It can be interpreted to mean "The Duke, whom Henry will overthrow, is still alive" or "The Duke, who will overthrow Henry, is still alive". I don't know what Klingon rank got mangled into "Duke" in English. But what's the grammatical structure that allows for this ambiguity in the original Klingon? -- De'vID
On 7/16/2021 7:05 PM, De'vID wrote:
This came up in a conversation and I started wondering how the original Klingon version looks like.
If you're not familiar with Shakespeare, the sentence is ambiguous. It can be interpreted to mean "The Duke, whom Henry will overthrow, is still alive" or "The Duke, who will overthrow Henry, is still alive".
I don't know what Klingon rank got mangled into "Duke" in English. But what's the grammatical structure that allows for this ambiguity in the original Klingon?
Can't be done in Klingon. Can't be done in colloquial English, either. It only works for Shakespeare because poetic English can utilize subject-verb inversion wherever it helps the line. I mean, maybe there's some word with a special double-meaning that might trick the grammar into this for just this one instance, but I haven't thought of one. But there's no grammatical structure in Klingon that will do this. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
Am 17.07.2021 um 01:05 schrieb De'vID:
If you're not familiar with Shakespeare, the sentence is ambiguous. It can be interpreted to mean "The Duke, whom Henry will overthrow, is still alive" or "The Duke, who will overthrow Henry, is still alive".
I don't know what Klingon rank got mangled into "Duke" in English.
I think that in "Much Ado About Nothing", they translated "Duchess" as {qumwI'} "governor, one who governs." (of course, that's not canon)
what's the grammatical structure that allows for this ambiguity in the original Klingon?
I first thought this is the typical {-bogh} ambiguity: {yIntaH HenrI' HoHlaHbogh qumwI'.} But I see that's a different kind of ambiguity. Since the English version is tricking its grammar, I would also do it in Klingon. Maybe like this: {yIntaH qumwI''e' HenrI' HoHlaHbogh.} This is not grammatical, but it has two ways to analyze: 1. If you correct the word order, you get {qumwI''e' HoHlaHbogh HenrI'.} "the duke whom Henry can kill" 2. if you regard only the second part of the sentence {HenrI' HoHlaHbogh} "who can kill Henry", preceded by the marked head noun, so "The duke, he can kill Henry" Yes, I know, it's cheating, but that's what Shakespeare also did. -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.tlhInganHol.com http://klingon.wiki/En/Hamlet
participants (3)
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De'vID -
Lieven L. Litaer -
SuStel