A Quick Reference to Subjects and Objects in Klingon

The word order of a Klingon sentence is normally object–verb–subject, i.e. the reversed order of English. However, also unlike English, the same pronouns are always used, not depending on whether used as subject or object (so there is, for example, no difference between I and me).

The pronouns ghaH and chaH refers only to beings capable of language, other beings are refered to using ’oH and bIH. [TKD 5.1]

Singular		Plural
jIH	I, me	maH	we, us
SoH	you	tlhIH	you
ghaH	he, she, him, her	chaH	they, them
’oH	it	bIH	they, them

Klingon also has a set of verb prefixes to denote subject and object. – Pronouns are not all that common in everyday speech as verb prefixes are usually enough to convey the meaning. When pronouns are used it is usually for emphasis, disambiguation (in the cases where a prefix can mean several things), and in “to be” phrases (such as in the expression tlhI­ngan maH! We are Klingons! [TKW p.3]), where the pronoun act as a verb it its own right. [TKD 6.3]

It is, however, never outright wrong to use pronouns.

OBJECT
jIH	maH	SoH	tlhIH	ghaH ’oH	chaH bIH	(pagh)
HI-	gho-	×	×	yI-	tI-	yI-	SoH (ra’)	S U B J E C T
HI-	gho-	×	×	yI-	tI-	pe-	tlhIH (ra’)
×	×	qa-	Sa-	vI-	vI-	jI-	jIH
×	×	pI-	re-	wI-	DI-	ma-	maH
cho-	ju-	×	×	Da-	Da-	bI-	SoH
tu-	che-	×	×	bo-	bo-	Su-	tlhIH
mu-	nu-	Du-	lI-	-	-	-	ghaH/’oH
mu-	nu-	nI-	lI-	lu-	-	-	chaH/bIH
vI-lu’	wI-lu’	Da-lu’	bo-lu’	-lu’	lu-lu’	-lu’	(vay’)

A shaded area indicates that pronouns and/or suffixes must be used, and a single dash “-” indicates that no prefix is applied to the verb for that particular combination of subject/object. Note that Type 1 verb suffixes -’egh onself and -chuq each other [TKD 4.2.1], and Type 4 verb suffix -moH cause [TKD 4.2.4] also affect the way in which prefixes are used [HQ 7:3, p.3].