On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 at 15:54, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius@gmx.de> wrote:

Am 20.11.2019 um 15:40 schrieb De'vID:
> In the Latin transcription used to write Klingon, the two meanings can
> be distinguished by a space: {tera'ngan} "Terran, Earther (Humans and
> other species native to Earth)" and {tera'[ ]ngan} "inhabitant of Earth
> (regardless of planet of origin)". In speaking, perhaps there is a
> slight pause in {tera'[ ]ngan}.

But as we all know, Okrand doesn't much care about spaces, and Klingon
is a spoken language. ;-)

He doesn't care much about spaces when it comes to compound words and their individual components. However, he distinguishes between words and suffixes, and I don't know how significant this is, but the qepHom booklet says "{-ngan}" and not {ngan}. This suggests that while the standalone word {ngan} means "inhabitant (of)", there's a very similar suffix-like thing which is used to indicate a group of beings more generally (and which may have been historically or etymologically related to the standalone word).

De'vID