[tlhIngan Hol] Suffix position: semantically significant?

[Lieven L. Litaer]

Am 07.06.2018 um 15:25 schrieb Daniel Dadap:
> My intuition tells me [...]

That's your Terran English speaking intuition. :-)

I understand your point. It's the classic "I must open the door" 
problem, *vI-poSmoH-nIS.

A short answer is simply: That's the way Klingon works, get used to it.

longer answer:
Indeed this sometimes causes ambiguous situations, and if you really 
want to avoid ambiguity, you must either rephrase it, or add suffixes 
like -qu' to mark the important suffix. But there's no way to change the 
system of the suffixes order. And after a while you will even get used 
to the correct order.

Besides, a suffix does not only modify its preceding suffixes or word 
parts, it modifies the entire thing. It really is hard sometimes, and 
you cannot do wordplays you may do in English by switching words.


-- 
Lieven L. Litaer
aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany"
http://www.klingonisch.de
http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/StarTrekDiscovery