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- Topic: Klingon >
- "jIyajbe'."
18 Comments
It's not specifically about this sentence but I would like to applause the contributors of this course, who made hard work during more than a year to offer us Klingon, not disappointed of the waiting !
This sentence discussion is probably a good place to have an explanation of how to find the Tips & Notes. The original concept behind Duolingo was that learners would pick up the languages only through example sentences and without grammar explanations. The have now expanded to more complex languages where some instruction is going to be necessary, but they still have the Tips & Notes hidden. Since Duolingo has hidden the Tips & Notes I want to make sure you know about them and where to find them. If you have not been reading the Tips & Notes, I would like to ask that you review those so we don’t have to repeat too much of the information that we have explained there.
If you are doing the course on iOS or Android, you cannot currently access the Tips & Notes through the app. To access the Tips & Notes, you will have to access the course using a web browser at https://www.duolingo.com/. You can still do it on your mobile device, but you will have to use the web browser instead of the app (or you can do it from a computer). When you click on a Skill, it will expand to reveal a Start button, a key, and a light bulb.
If you click on the light bulb it will reveal the Tips & Notes and give you a detailed explanation of the grammar that is introduced in that Skill. If you have questions after reading the Tips & Notes for any Skills, then please return to these forums and sentence discussions to ask your questions, explaining what you didn’t understand or what seems contradictory to you.
That’s right: the apostrophe counts as a letter in Klingon and represents the glottal stop.
This is not the national language of any country. There are speakers spread around the world in many countries. This is a language which was constructed for use by the fictional Klingon alien race in the Star Trek movies and TV shows. It is a real language with real structure and extensive vocabulary, but it does not actually have any native speakers and the practical uses are extremely limited, so it's mostly studied as a hobby. Many of the language's top speakers speak multiple natural languages and have very complicated and useful jobs, but want to just do something fun and useless from time to time. If it sounds interesting, check it out. If not, thanks for asking - I hope you've learned something today.
No, not JLYAJBE but jIyajbe'.
All the letters have to be lowercase, except for the second letter which is an uppercase i. Also, you left out the last letter, which is ' (an apostrophe).
I have gathered from listening to Worf that nothing from Klingon would translate into a contraction (e.g. "don't"). Is that just Worf being a dork, or is there a grammar rule on this?
Klingon does not have contractions, but there is no reason that you can't use contractions in your English translations.
It used to be that people learning English we taught that contractions were too informal and that they never use them for fear of seeking too casual. Even still, today, many English learners find contractions confusing. Because of these reasons it is a stereotype that people who have learned English as a second language avoid contractions.
I'm sure that the producers and writers on Star Trek took advantage of that and refused to let Worf use contractions as a subtle way to imply his foreigners. Same with Spock in The Original Series.
This isn't really about the sentence, but I have to say, I personally love this language, but it's hard for me to learn without audio... I'll be learning it by letters meanwhile! :D
Yes, it’s unfortunate!
Until we have audio, pay extra special attention to the difference between the letters I (capital i) and l (small L) — the latter should have a small curl at the bottom.
