[tlhIngan Hol] yong and yongHa'

[Will Martin]

SuStel answered this well, though I’d like to offer an interpretation more specific about the details of meaning of the word. He and I are both making educated guesses here, honestly giving it our best shot.

This is a gut feeling: I don’t see {yong} as acting like {ghoS} as much as it acts like {vegh}. It’s not so much telling you WHERE a motion happens (like {ghoS} does) as it is what kind of action you are taking by moving from one place to another (like {vegh} does, or like {‘el} does). It relates to a kind of boundary between spaces (inside vs. outside).

It seems like a synonym for {‘el}, and Klingon doesn’t really have a lot of synonyms, so one is drawn to try to distinguish why we’d have two different words here for the same action. So, I’m drawn to look for subtle differences in the English words “Enter” vs “Get in”.

Mostly, I see that “get in” implies more of an explicit, visible container, as in, “We’re leaving. Get in the car,” or “It’s raining. Get in the house.” Contrast this to, “After hours on the road, we entered the city,” or “You are entering the Twilight Zone”.

This difference has porous boundaries. “We got into the city last night at 9:00.” Does “get into” work exactly like “get in”? Perhaps not.

So, likely there are areas one would “enter" that you could not "get in", and containers that you could either "get in" or “enter". Getting in seems less formal and perhaps a little more urgent. When you get in, the focus is on getting the last bit of you inside, so there’s nothing left outside. Entering has more to do with the leading edge penetrating the boundary. When a sword enters a torso, the whole sword doesn’t have to penetrate the boundary, but when you get in from the rain, all of you has to be where it won’t get wet. Similarly, entering a room focuses on the leading edge, while getting in focuses on the trailing edge.

You enter by opening a door. You get in by closing the door behind you. Think about it. You are outside a room. You are told to enter. You open the door and stand in the doorway, looking around. You are then told to get in. You step the rest of the way into the room and close the door behind you.

None of this conflicts with what SuStel said. I agree about {-Daq} making a noun the location of the action and not the object of the action. I’m just trying to add my spin on understanding the details of meaning of {yong} and why Maltz bothered to give us a word so similar to {‘el}.

None of this is from Maltz or Okrand. I’m just suggesting a possible reason for the verbs being imperfect synonyms with a subtle difference.

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.




> On Jul 11, 2019, at 7:17 AM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> We have the verb {yong} meaning "get in".
> 
> I can say {juH vIyong} without *having* to write {juHDaq vIyong}, since that would be redundant. It wouldn't be wrong. Just redundant.
> 
> Suppose now, I want to say "I get out of the house", and suppose that I want to use {yongHa'}.
> 
> Do I write {juH vIyongHa'} or {juHvo' jIyongHa'} ?
> 
> I tend toward the {juHvo' jIyongHa'}, since {juH vIyongHa'} sounds like "I get out the house".
> 
> But since I'm not sure, if someone could clarify this, it would be great.
> 
> ~ gkkhkh
> _______________________________________________
> tlhIngan-Hol mailing list
> tlhIngan-Hol at lists.kli.org
> http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/attachments/20190711/56509c26/attachment.htm>