[tlhIngan Hol] the problem with {naw'wat}

[SuStel]

On 9/12/2021 1:57 PM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
>
> naw'wat (n) remote, small, desolate place
>
>
> And I wonder.. Why does a remote, desolate place necessarily need to 
> be small? Aren't there remote, desolate places of the "big" kind?
>
>
> So why would 'oqranD give a word, which on one hand functions as a 
> tool to express ourselves further, but at the same time tie our hands 
> restricting its' meaning like this?
>
Because the word refers to a place, not an area. It refers to a place 
isolated in a desolate area, which makes the place relatively small. If 
the place were large, it wouldn't be isolated in its desolation.


> If 'oqranD had defined {naw'wat} as "remote, desolate place", and 
> that's it, then it would be easy to describe it further as "big" or 
> "small", and only if the size of the place was actually of any 
> significance. But now we can't.

Big and small are relative. The pun of the word *naw'wat* is that 
/NowWhat/ is the name of an isolated, backwater planet in /Mostly 
Harmless,/ the fifth book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 
series. When the settlers arrived at this miserable planet in the middle 
of nowhere, the first thing they said was, "Now what?" It's an entire 
planet, but compared to the vast scale of the galaxy, with all the 
interesting things in it, this lousy, awful, and isolated planet is a 
*naw'wat.*


-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name
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