[tlhIngan Hol] Can we say {qarbe''a'} ?

[Jeffrey Clark]

Sent from my iPad

> On May 8, 2019, at 16:08, Will Martin <willmartin2 at mac.com> wrote:
> 
> You have verb suffixes to describe your degree of certainty of any verb’s action. Why do you need to say something and then ask if what you said is not accurate?

Poetry might be one case. As I’ve said, one might just as easily use {muj’a’} for many of them.

We can have some fun with it:

{los boq wej, chen vagh!} jatlh ghojwI’... ‘a qarbe’’a’?
“Three plus four is five” said a student... but that’s not right? (That’s rough to translate)

{los boq wej, chen vagh!} jatlh ghojwI’... ‘a muj’a’?
“Three plus four is five” said a student... but is that wrong?

{los boq wej, chen vagh!} jatlh ghojwI’... ‘a muj qar’a’?
“Three plus four is five” said a student... but that’s wrong, isn’t it?

{los boq wej, chen vagh!} jatlh ghojwI’... ‘a qarbe’ qar’a’?
“Three plus four is five” said a student... but that’s not right, right? ({qarbe’ qar’a’} is kinda fun to say...)

We can also use our affixes to make it more fun:

... mujchu’’a’ — isn’t that clearly wrong?
...qarbe’ba’ qar’a’ — that’s obviously not right, right?


This is the beauty of language — to me, at least — being able to explore and (hopefully) use it’s different inflections and possibilities for varied and interesting communication. What’s the point of human(oid) expression — the arts and humanities — if the desire is just to communicate within the strictest, most literal, and most direct manner possible? There’s a multitude of ways to say the same thing, and each one feels different and conveys a different intention, shouldn’t we explore them? Embrace them?

—jevreH