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Re: Klingon vs. Tengwar - UserFriendly

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Saturday, November 25, 2006, 22:07
On 11//25/06, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpjonsson@...> wrote:
> I dare however suggest that 'Orc' in Klingon be _orQ_ (_'orQ_?).
With a very few exceptions (notably |-rgh| /rG/ = [rG] or [4G]), tlhIngan Hol phonology allows no consonant clusters in syllables; for instance, Worf's name is generally rendered in "the original Klingon" as a bisyllable |worIv|, because |-rv| is illegal (and [f] doesn't exist). So "orc" would have to transliterate as something like |'orIq| [?O4Iq], but since neology is frowned upon we generally just insert the desired word as-is.. Translating "wannabe" suffers from the lack of "to be" in Klingon; unlike the Quenya case, this is not ignorance but a design point of the language: there is no such verb. So you could translate it somewhat loosely as "persons who admire orcs" {<orc>pu' Ho'bogh nuvpu''e'}, or "persons who want to *become* orcs" {<orc>pu' moj luneHbogh nuvpu''e'}. You could also use something completely different, like "so-called orcs" {<orc>pu'qoq} or "apparent orcs" {<orc>pu'Hey}.. The "want to become" version is grammatically odd because {neH} "want" is a special case. Using the general form analogous to auxiliary+infinitive, "they want to become them" would be *{moj 'e' luneH}, but the verb {neH} has a special simplifying rule that makes it just {moj luneH} without the {'e'}, or even {moj neH} without the verbal prefix {lu-} (they V it). Which means the whole thing is not a normal clause, and the subordination via {-bogh} may not therefore be possible, or it may need to be done differently. -- Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>