[tlhIngan Hol] Klingon Word of the Day: puS

[Alan Anderson]

On Mon, May 24, 2021 at 11:27 PM Will Martin <willmartin2 at mac.com> wrote:

> But it bothers me that it says “be few” instead of saying “be a few”.
>
> To me “be few” just feels very, very different.
>
> “I have a few apples” is just a statement about having three or four, or
> less commonly five apples.
>
> But “I have few apples” loads the statement with a disappointed
> expectation. One might expect me to have a bunch of apples, but nope. I
> don’t. I have few.
>

Try not to base your intuition about the words' implications on how they
present themselves in English. They're not acting with the same grammar. "A
few" is a quantity. "Few" is an adjective. In Klingon, the unspecified
quantity is {'op}, and the verb expressing a quality is {puS}.

To recalibrate your "feel" for the word, use it as a verb. "My apples are
few." That might express disappointment, but it might just be a simple
contrast with "my apples are many." Without context, I don't think it
implies anything in particular.


> In other words, does {puS} = {law’be’} or {law’Ha’}?
>

Since it's a word in its own right, I don't think it needs to *equal*
anything, but I think it's closer to {law'Ha'} than to {law'be'}.

-- ghunchu'wI'
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