Verbs and Prefixes

Klingon Grammar 1

Course 1 · Chapter 4 · Verbs and Prefixes

A Klingon verb carries more information in its beginning than an English verb does. It starts with a prefix that tells you who is doing the action and who or what it is done to, both in one syllable. It then ends with suffixes (Chapters 6 and 7) that add ideas such as ability, completion or negation. This chapter is about the prefix.

The idea in a box

A Klingon verb is prefix + root + suffixes, and the prefix names both the subject and the object. The same root with a different prefix is a different sentence.

Verb Roots

A verb root is the bare action. It carries no tense, and nothing in the root says who does it. A few roots to work with:

Root	Meaning	Takes an object?
legh	see	yes
Sam	find	yes
Sop	eat	yes
jatlh	speak, say	yes
yaj	understand	yes
Hegh	die	no

Klingon verbs have no tense. The root legh means "see", "saw" or "will see", and the time comes from context or from a time word. Aspect (finished or ongoing) can be shown by a suffix, which you will meet in Chapter 6.

Prefixes With No Object

When there is no object, because the verb doesn't take one or because none is mentioned, the prefix marks only the subject:

Subject	Prefix	With Hegh "die"
I	jI-	jIHegh
you	bI-	bIHegh
he, she, it	none	Hegh
we	ma-	maHegh
you (plural)	Su-	SuHegh
they	none	Hegh

The third person, "he/she/it" and "they", has no prefix at all, so the bare root Hegh can mean any of them. Context, or a pronoun or noun in the sentence, tells you which. A prefix-less form is a form with a zero prefix, a concept you met as a zero morpheme in Introduction to Linguistics 4. (When a plural third-person subject acts on a singular object there is a separate prefix, lu-; this course keeps to singular subjects there.)

Prefixes With an Object

When the verb has an object, the prefix is chosen by the pair: who does it, and to whom. The table below covers the combinations used in this course. Read down for the subject and across for the object.

Subject ↓ / Object →	me	you	us	him, her, it	them
I	–	qa-	–	vI-	vI-
you	cho-	–	ju-	Da-	Da-
he, she, it	mu-	Du-	nu-	none	none
we	–	pI-	–	wI-	DI-

The dashes mark combinations that don't occur: you can't "see me" with I as the subject, because that would need a reflexive form (a separate construction). The full table also has columns and rows for "you (plural)" and "they"; you will meet them as they are needed.

# same root, different prefix, different meaning
vIlegh      vI- + legh     I see him/her/it/them
qalegh      qa- + legh     I see you
cholegh     cho- + legh    you see me
Dalegh      Da- + legh     you see him/her/it
mulegh      mu- + legh     he/she/it sees me
Dulegh      Du- + legh     he/she/it sees you
wIlegh      wI- + legh     we see him/her/it
DIlegh      DI- + legh     we see them

Decoding a Known Phrase

You met tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh'a'? in Chapter 1. Now it can be taken apart:

tlhIngan Hol   Da  -  jatlh  -  'a'
Klingon language  you→it  speak  yes/no question

# "Do you speak the Klingon language?"
# Da- = you do it to an object (here the language); -'a' makes it a question

jIyajbe'    =  jI-  +  yaj  +  -be'
                I      understand   not          "I do not understand"

Notice that the object, tlhIngan Hol, comes first and the verb after it. The next chapter explains why.

A Comparison: Hungarian

Marking the object on the verb is not unique to Klingon. Hungarian does something similar, with one set of endings when the object is definite and another when it is not, and a special ending for "I … you":

Meaning	Hungarian	Klingon
I see it	látom	vIlegh
I see you	látlak	qalegh
I see (no particular object)	látok	(a verb with no object, with jI-)

The difference is where the information goes: Hungarian puts it in a suffix at the end of the verb, while Klingon puts it in a prefix at the front. English has no equivalent and uses separate pronouns: I see you.

Watch out: the prefix names both people, in a fixed order

qalegh is "I see you" and cholegh is "you see me". Mixing up subject and object reverses the meaning, so learn the prefixes as pairs. Also remember the case: Du-, Da- and DI- begin with a capital D, and pI-, vI- and wI- have a capital I, so dalegh or wilegh would be misspellings.

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1

Build the Klingon verb for each, using legh "see", Sam "find", Sop "eat": (a) "I see it"; (b) "you find it"; (c) "he sees me"; (d) "we eat it"; (e) "I find you".

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Exercise 2

Say who does what to whom in each: (a) cholegh; (b) qaSam; (c) DIlegh; (d) bIHegh; (e) Dulegh. Then explain why the bare form Hegh could mean four different things in English.

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Exercise 3

Compare Klingon and Hungarian: match látom, látlak and látok with Klingon forms or with an explanation of what Klingon does instead. Then say in one sentence what is the main structural difference between the two languages' ways of marking the object.

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Chapter 4 Quick Reference

Verb = prefix + root + suffixes; no tense
No object: jI- I, bI- you, none = he/she/it/they, ma- we, Su- you (plural)
With object: vI- I→it, qa- I→you, Da- you→it, cho- you→me, mu- he→me, Du- he→you, nu- he→us, wI- we→it, DI- we→them, pI- we→you, ju- you→us
A third-person subject with no object, or a singular third-person subject, has no prefix (a zero prefix)
Hungarian marks the object on the verb too, by endings instead of prefixes

Coming next

Klingon Grammar 1, Chapter 5 puts the pieces together into sentences. You will meet the pronouns, the object–verb–subject word order, and the way Klingon says "to be" without a verb "to be".