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).
|jIH||I, me||maH||we, us|
|ghaH||he, she, him, her||chaH||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.
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].