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I'm trying to translate this sentence:

"May we drink from the empty skulls of our enemies"

to tlhIngan-Hol / Klingon, this will be used as a toast at a friends' wedding (of all things). While my understanding of Klingon grammar is pretty basic, this task seems reasonable enough. Using The Klingon Dictionary I've got this far:

jaghpu'ma' chim nach HomDu'vaD matlhutlhjaj

Where:

  1. jaghpu'ma' is "our enemies"
  2. chim is "be empty"
  3. nach is "head", Hom is bone - I'm using nach HomDu' as a stand-in for "skulls" unless I find something better (see my other question*, also, see update below)
  4. -vaD (if I understand correctly) marks the sentence so far as a purpose clause, so roughly "used for"
  5. matlhutlh is "we drink"
  6. -jaj makes the sentence into a "wish", XXXjaj translates as "may XXX"

So a rough literal translation back to English is something like "May we drink using our enemies' empty head-bones"

Is this correct? Any way to translate the sentence better? Thanks.

[Update from 2022] The word for "skull" is DughrI' (details in other question, it was added to the lexicon after this question was posted).

So the corrected rendition is:

"May we drink from the empty skulls of our enemies"

jaghpu'ma' chim DughrI'Du'vaD matlhutlhjaj

Still not sure that's a correct / the best phrasing.

*: Addressing this explicitly as this question was marked as duplicate. This is not a duplicate of the question Is there a word for 'skull' in Klingon - that question asks for a specific word, while this question deals with the validity and best phrasing of a sentence (regardless of what's the best Klingon term for that specific term).

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  • Possible duplicate of Is there a word for "skull" in Klingon?
    – USERNAME GOES HERE
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 19:23
  • @Victor - not a duplicate, but obviously they are related - this question deals with the validity of the entire sentence, which has several points I'm not certain are correct or the best way to phrase. The other question deals with the single word "skull", which I was surprised I couldn't find a cannon term for in Klingon.
    – G0BLiN
    Commented Dec 4, 2019 at 8:42

1 Answer 1

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Looking at the grammar page on the Klingon Wiki, it seems to be correct.

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  • Hi @anonymoususer, thanks for posting. At its current state, your post isn't enough for an answer - a link could change or break making this answer useless. Additionally, that link points to the main grammar portal of the Klingon Wiki, meaning a reader will need to go over multiple pages and figure out for themselves whether the sentence is correct. Consider expanding this answer - explaining here why the sentence is correct (Linking to specific supporting articles from the wiki would improve the answer, but it should stand on its own).
    – G0BLiN
    Commented Jul 10, 2022 at 14:54
  • I intended to post the link as a comment, to provide a resource for the OP, but at the time, I did not have enough reputation to post a comment.
    – anonymoususer
    Commented Jul 19, 2022 at 18:33
  • No worries - note that comments should be treated as temporary (mods can and do delete them from time to time) - anything useful/important for anyone reading this answer in a couple of days/months/years should be edited into the answer proper. And, again - don't rely on just links to other sites, provide the relevant details here (edit the answer, don't use comments for that ;-) ). It can take time to get used to the way StackExchange sites work, but they are useful exactly because the way they do - consider taking the tour if you haven't already.
    – G0BLiN
    Commented Jul 21, 2022 at 19:17

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