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- Topic: Klingon >
- "mara yajbe' torgh."
15 Comments
Duolingo really should take you directly to the Tips & Notes at least the first time you do a Skill. I would actually prefer that they always take you to the Tips & Notes and then have a Start button at both the top and the bottom. Then one could choose not to read them, but everyone would get the chance and no one could say they didn't know that the Tips & Notes were there.
When looking at the written language, it can seem like that sometimes, but please don't develop that habit. When spoken it is read from left to right and you have to get used to hearing and saying the object first and the subject last. Also only some parts are in the reversed order - not all parts are. If the sentence were instead, yajbe' mara torgh je, we would keep the names in the same order and notice the conjunction moves, too: "Mara and Torg do not understand." Have you read the Tips & Notes (they exist on all the skills, but you have to click on the lightbulb that appears when you click on the skill to read the Tips & Notes)?
That can work for transitive verbs (that can take a direct object and form the passive voice), but e.g. Sop mara cannot turn into “was eaten by Mara” or anything like that — only “Mara ate.” makes sense.
And then you might as well translate qagh Sop mara as “Mara ate gagh” rather than as “Gagh was eaten by Mara”.
Because Klingon writing doesn't have case.
A t is always a t and a D is always a D: there are no letters such as T or d in Klingon. q and Q are separate letters.
So it's a little like asking why the first digit of a number isn't capitalised when the number comes at the start of a sentence -- we don't have uppercase and lowercase numbers, and Klingon doesn't have uppercase and lowercase letters. Each Klingon letter just has one case, just like English numerals.
Instead of having to learn 52 letter shapes (as in English), you only have to learn 26 -- half the trouble :)
a b ch D e gh H I j l m n ng o p q Q r S t tlh u v w y '