[tlhIngan Hol] can we apply {ngagh} to humans ?

[SuStel]

On 12/18/2019 12:24 PM, qurgh lungqIj wrote:
> Klingons mate. Humans mate too. They might label it "making love", 
> "having sex", "shagging", "doing it", "making the beast with two 
> backs" or something else to try to differentiate it from what the rest 
> of the biological world does, but it's still mating.

Sure, but what we're interested in is labels, or words. Outside of a 
science-fiction context, nobody speaking modern English says /mate/ to 
refer to people having sex.

*ngagh* and *nga'chuq* seems to refer to basically the same sort of act. 
The question is, do they get more specific?


>
>     Or is it primarily used for animals ?
>
>
> Humans and Klingons *are *animals.

But languages usually distinguish between people and non-people, and 
Klingon basically does this in its capable-of-using-language suffixes 
and its pronouns. The distinction here may be important in Klingon. It 
is in English.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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