[tlhIngan Hol] New words from "Miniatur Wunderland"

nIqolay Q niqolay0 at gmail.com
Tue Apr 2 12:57:02 PDT 2019


On Tue, Apr 2, 2019 at 3:13 PM qurgh lungqIj <qurgh at wizage.net> wrote:

> But none of the example use the word "big" or "large". Okrand had a chance
> to use simple scale words like "big" and "small", but instead uses "major",
> "strong", and "ultimate", all of which imply something more than *just* a
> increase in scale/size.
>
> A "strong wind" is one that can blow you over, or knock over a tree,
> there's more than scale change here.
> A "major blunder" is one really big deal. It's not just a "big" blunder,
> it's a "major" blunder. This is a change in size, but it's more than just
> "big".
> "Ultimate power" is more than just "big power" or "a lot of power", it's
> the "ultimate" power. It's all the power in the world, again this is more
> than just "big"
>

A "wisp of air" is something you can barely feel, if anything it's closer
> to {nu'} air than {mach}.
> A "temporary peace" has nothing to do with size, but duration.
>

None of those nouns really describe things that have a physical size in the
first place, so *mach* and *tIn* probably wouldn't apply anyway. *SuS*
might have size in the sense of the area of ground it covers, perhaps. The
idea that *SuS'a'* implies wind strong enough to knock a person or tree
over isn't in the text (and the difference between wind that can knock over
a tree and wind that can't *is* just a scale change). What would be the
difference between a "major blunder" and a "big mistake"? I think you may
be reading too much into the words used in the examples. Saying that a
*SuSHom* would be closer to *nu'* than *mach* appears to be entirely based
on your own interpretation of the word "wisp".

Again, it's as if you're looking at the English glosses of a word without
*-Hom* and the word with *-Hom* and assuming that all the different
connotations of those English glosses carry over to the Klingon, as if they
were specific *definitions* instead of just examples of how one might
translate such a concept.


> but when I read a word like {naQHom} I think of it as a {naQ} that can be
> smaller, and/or less important, and/or less powerful. It can be one, it can
> be all.
>

So you're saying *naQHom* can mean a *naQ* that is smaller, but not less
important or less powerful. That's what "and/or" means.


> Ultimately, this is my point: {-Hom} doesn't equal {mach}, and {-'a'}
> doesn't equal {tIn}, there is much more to the suffixes than those two
> words.
>

*-Hom* isn't synonymous with *mach* and no one said it was. *-Hom* can
refer to diminutive aspects of things besides size (such as importance).
But *mach* *is* one of the notions that can be expressed with *-Hom*, and
there are examples (*bo'DaghHom, naQHom*) where it appears to be the *only*
notion expressed with *-Hom*.
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