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

[Iikka Hauhio]

It all comes down to punctuation being unimportant, as I have said in several other threads this month.

'elaDya'ngan is same as 'elaDya' ngan, a noun-noun construction meaning "inhabitant of Greece". For arbitrary reasons, people write spaces between some words and not between other words. Spaces are as unimportant as are commas, periods, and so on. You can use them if you want.

There are reasons to not write spaces sometimes. For example, a compound word might be so established that Klingons do not perceive it as a noun-noun construct anymore, but as a whole new lemma. It is unknown which words are like this. Compounds that have verbs, like yejquv, SeHjan must certainly be written without a space as they aren't be noun-noun constructs, but for noun+noun words it gets more difficult to say.

Consider the word DIvI'may'Duj, for example, written without spaces. In canon sources, ship types are usually written with space, for example tlhIngan may'Duj, a Klingon battle cruiser. Why did Okrand use a space when talking about the Federation, but not when talking about the Klingons? I'm not sure there is any rule or good reason for it. He might have simply thought that it looked better without a space.

Some people are firmly against writing words together without spaces because they think it is same as "inventing new words". This is not true, it is just a matter of convention how to punctuate the Okrandian notation and has nothing to do with inventing words. In reality, people write noun-noun constructs together all the time without spaces, for example SochleS, SuwomIyngan, mI'tej, ta'puq, etc. etc.

Iikka "fergusq" Hauhio

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Wednesday, January 26th, 2022 at 14.36, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:

> Perhaps this is a ridiculous question, but since {-ngan} isn't listed in the official klingon suffixes, then how are we able to write {'elaDya'ngan} unless we have the specific word {'elaDya'ngan} in Ca'Non?
>
> --
>
> Dana'an
> https://sacredtextsinklingon.wordpress.com/
> Ζεὺς ἦν, Ζεὺς ἐστίν, Ζεὺς ἔσσεται· ὦ μεγάλε Ζεῦ
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/attachments/20220126/9c4a96f1/attachment-0004.htm>