On 3/30/2021 7:57 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:
In English you have "someone" and "somebody".
In the alien language of Klingon (which is so alien that is crawling with terran puns), we have: {vay'} (n) "somebody, something, anybody, anything".
Now, in this page: https://www.learnersdictionary.com/qa/difference-between-someone-and-somebod...
We read the following:
***** quote start ***** ***** quote end *****
One could wonder, whether in the alien language of Klingon (which is so alien that is crawling with terran puns), the {vay'} has the same "informal" character as in English.
Wait, you're suggesting that *vay'* is informal because Okrand mentioned the word /somebody/ in the gloss but not the word /someone?/ That doesn't make any sense on many levels. Here's one: if *vay'* is informal, what's the formal version? Okrand wasn't looking for every synonym for /somebody/ when he wrote that gloss. Since /somebody/ and /someone /are more or less interchangeable, he just included one of them. I have no doubt any data about /someone/ being used more often in formal contexts never even crossed his mind when he wrote it. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name