[tlhIngan Hol] Why not law'wI'pu' ?

[Lieven L. Litaer]

I lost the original to message to quote it, but mayqel said he felt 
strange using {law'wI'}.

The reason is that {law'wI'pu'} does not mean "the many" but the "ones 
who are many". Again: it does not mean "those multiple people who are 
lots of single persons altogether" but it means "those people of which 
each single one is many" which makes no sense.

So, IMHO, {law'wI'} "thing/person which is many" makes no sense at all.

Unless, maybe, in situations where the Borg queen said "I am the one who 
is many", but that's a very unusual situation, even in English.

If I'd use {law'wI'pu'} in a sentence, it sounds like "the manyers" in 
English.

....but this is not English ...

Still, this is an interesting question that cannot be answered entirely, 
as Maltz may tell us other things about that. What about {mapuS} or 
{malaw'}? Isn't that "we are many"?

Based on this phrase
{Doq SuvwI'pu'; DoqwI'pu' vIlegh.}
the following should be acceptable too:
{law' SuvwI'pu'; law'wI'pu' vIlegh.}

Okay, now I'm eating my own statement... :-/


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