[tlhIngan Hol] is De' "data, information" countable ?
SuStel
sustel at trimboli.name
Fri Jul 10 08:45:57 PDT 2020
On 7/10/2020 11:42 AM, Will Martin wrote:
> {vItlh} was apparently added to the vocabulary at the 2017 qepHom. The
> quote about painsticks precedes that by a few years. Likely, Okrand
> was giving us canon before the use of {law’} was restricted to
> countable objects, and this was one of those tweakings of the language
> that came later.
>
> Then again, since Okrand tends to keep everything canon legal, that
> probably means that while best practice is to differentiate between
> {law’} and {vItlh}, you aren’t completely wrong if you screw up and
> use {law’}.
I agree. And if you need more justification, consider how often English
speakers mix up /less /(used for uncountable nouns) and /fewer/ (used
for countable nouns). Most English speakers have no idea which one is
"correct," and use them interchangeably. The distinction between these
words is disappearing.
Klingon *vItlh* and *law' *may be experiencing something similar. Or the
explanation could be completely different. Without knowing more, we can
just say that one solitary exception isn't enough to destroy a
subsequent general rule.
--
SuStel
http://trimboli.name
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