Help:A Guide to Klingon/nouns

Nouns
Some English words, such as talk, act as both a verb and a noun. This also happens in Klingon, so that qum means to govern and government.

The suffix -er added to a verb in English forms a noun, meaning one who does or thing which does. The Klingon equivalent is -wI', which is described more fully under verbs. This suffix is also a possessive noun suffix.

Sentence word order
In a Klingon sentence the word order is the opposite of English. The subject comes after the verb and the object before it.

It may help to read the Klingon as if it is written in the passive voice, in the examples this is listed as Literal English. It is not the correct translation, but an aid to identifying the right subject and obect.

There are fives types of noun suffix. Only one of each type is allowed. Suffixes must appear in type order: NOUN-1-2-3-4-5.

Suffix type 2: Plurals
In Klingon, the root form of a noun can be used as singular or plural.

For example yas jIlob can mean I obey the officer or I obey the officers. In some cases, the plurality is obvious from the context - loD maH means We are men.

There is an optional plural form for all nouns:

The -mey suffix can be used with nouns for beings that use language, in which case it indicates that the beings referred to are scattered. For example loDmey means men all over the place.

Suffix type 3: Qualification
These suffixes indicate the speaker's certainty about using the noun. Is it a bird or a plane?

Suffix type 4: Possession
-wIj, -maj, -lIj and -raj are derogatory when used with nouns that support language.

To show ownership between nouns, that is possession, use the syntax possessor-possessed.

Suffix type 5: Syntactic Markers
When a Klingon verb is used as an adjective, then these suffixes are instead applied to the verb: