6.2.2. Subordinate clauses

Kinja'd!!! by "RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
Published 01/27/2017 at 14:10

Tags: klingon shitposting
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Klingon verbs ending in Type 9 suffixes (other than -‘a’ interrogative and -wI’ one who does, one which does ) always occur in sentences with another verb. Hence, they are verbs in subordinate clauses.

cha yIbaH qara’DI’ -

or qara’DI’ cha yIbaH Fire the torpedoes at my command!

The two parts of this sentence are cha yIbaH fire the torpedoes! and qara’DI’ when I command you or as soon as I command you. -DI’ is a Type 9 suffix meaning as soon as , when, so qara’DI’ must occur as part of a larger sentence. Note that the order of the two parts of the sentence is variable.

A few further examples should make the use of subordinate clauses clear.

bIjatlhHa’chugh qaHoH

or qaHoH bIjatlhHa’chugh - If you say the wrong thing, I will kill you

( bIjatlhHa’chugh if you misspeak , qaHoH’ I kill you )

- The Klingon Dictionary, Marc Okrand, 1992. Excerpt.


Replies (6)

Kinja'd!!! "TheTurbochargedSquirrel" (thatsquirrel)
01/27/2017 at 14:13, STARS: 1

I honestly never expected to be getting Klingon lessons on Oppo.

Kinja'd!!! "RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
01/27/2017 at 14:24, STARS: 1

Kinja'd!!!

HlgoS !

Kinja'd!!! "Urambo Tauro" (urambotauro)
01/27/2017 at 14:27, STARS: 1

Haha, I never got into Klingon, but I did have an interesting encounter with the authorities a few years ago when I got a little carried away with Tengwar (the writing on the One Ring.)

Kinja'd!!! "RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
01/27/2017 at 14:34, STARS: 1

I’ve mentioned this before, but I have a Klingon dictionary here at work, from which I typed the above. I think somebody in my family toyed with the idea of learning some Sindarin at one point...

Kinja'd!!! "Urambo Tauro" (urambotauro)
01/27/2017 at 14:37, STARS: 0

Yeah, I started to look into the Elvish languages a little, but I didn’t get very far. It’s the writing that fascinated me. It just looks so cool! I don’t feel like typing the whole story right now, but if you’re interested, run a search for my user name and “FBI”.

Kinja'd!!! "RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile)
01/27/2017 at 14:42, STARS: 1

Nice. One of my younger brothers’ unreadable script gimmick is writing everything in Aurebesh or Standard Galactic Alphabe t, to the point he has his computer typically set to one or the other and other people can’t use them.