March of Cambreadth

[suzilla]

Some of you may be familiar with Heather Alexander's March of Cambreadth. It is a rousing war song that many Klingons love.

I was at a convention with her, and Heather expressed her interest in knowing the proper Klingon to a line in the song:

"How many of them can we make die!"

Those who want to hear a sample of the song can find it at: www.heatherlands.com

We would be grateful if anyone can help with the translation.

[Edit -- URL'd link]

[Klythe]

Hopefully I can save the grammarian a little time, by giving this a whack myself first.


"How many of them can we make die!"

Probable vocabulary:

'ar How much/many
HoH kill/make dead
jagh the enemy (they)

   The killing does have a stopping point, (since appearently we can't kill them all), so it should be marked with lI' at the end.  DI at the fron't says that _we_ are killing _them_.

Grammar is Object first, then Verb, then Subject(our subject in this case is expressed in the verb, so we do't have a word there):

My attempt at translation is:

jagh 'ar DIHoHlI'  or maybe just 'ar DIHoHlI'
Enemy howmany? WeAreKillingThem
How many enemies will we killed (before we are done killing them).

[ngabwI]

"The grammarian?" ::stunned, and a little flattered:: Thank you!

(Now I'll look like an absolute {Sa'Hut} if Klythe didn't mean me.) }}: )

Vocab choice was good, grammar was off, though. {jagh 'ar DIHoHlI'} means "How many of the enemy are we killing?"

I would  recast and say "How many of the enemy can we cause to die?":

{jagh 'ar} "How many of the enemy"

{DIHeghmoHlaH} "We can cause them to die"

{jagh 'ar DIHeghmoHlaH?} "How many of the enemy can we cause to die?"

HovpoH 701856.7

[suzilla]

Many thanks for the help. I have e-mailed Heather with this information. We shall see what she does with it