[tlhIngan Hol] using {ngan} as a suffix {ngan} as the suffix {-ngan}

[Iikka Hauhio]

> yesusingspacesandotherkindsofpunctuationareaconventionbutsomeconventionsaremoreimportantthanothers On this list, the convention is to not forge new compound nouns where there is no precedent for doing so.

As you example shows, using spaces to separate words is important when using latin alphabet (not with all alphabets, but with latin). BUT the rules of which words are written together and which are not varies.

I think the Klingon model is heavily inspired by English. English has two kinds of compound words, words like "post office" written with space and words like "mailbox" written without a space. It is quite arbitrary. In languages like Finnish and German, all compound words are written together without a space, and people don't see any difference between lexicalized and non-lexicalized compounds. Why does there have to be a distinction? Is it important to use punctuation to mark this distinction?

The rules Okrand use are not clear. There are compounds written with a space that appear in Okrand's dictionaries (for example "tuq Degh" in KGT). If that is not lexicalized, why is it listed in a dictionary?

Clearly spaces are not, for example, used to differentiate between canon compounds and non-canon compounds, as "tuq Degh" is a canon compound that has a space.

If there is no linguistic reason to write some compounds with space and some without, I'd prefer to write all of them in the same way. One way might be to wrote possessive noun-noun constructions with a space and all other without. That would at least be useful for the reader.

Remember that the Okrandian notation is a romanization. It is a tool for us, not for Klingons. Even if Klingons do have two classes of compound words, we don't know rules for that and therefore have no reason to support that feature in our writing system.

Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

On Wednesday, January 26th, 2022 at 18.10, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:

> On 1/26/2022 11:05 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
>
> > Usually, when I read a compound word which would normally be two
> >
> > separate ones, I become confused thinking that it's a new word which I
> >
> > don't know.
> >
> > So, in things that I write, I avoid omitting the gap between noun-noun
> >
> > constructions.
>
> And that's why the convention exists. Not because it's "canonical," not
>
> because it's a rule of Klingon grammar, but because it helps us
>
> recognize the difference between a lexicalized word and a phrase that we
>
> made up ourselves. Okrand doesn't have to figure out which words are
>
> lexicalized and which aren't; we do.
>
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