On Tue, Apr 2, 2019 at 3:13 PM qurgh lungqIj <qurgh@wizage.net> wrote:

But none of the example use the word "big" or "large". Okrand had a chance to use simple scale words like "big" and "small", but instead uses "major", "strong", and "ultimate", all of which imply something more than just a increase in scale/size.

A "strong wind" is one that can blow you over, or knock over a tree, there's more than scale change here.
A "major blunder" is one really big deal. It's not just a "big" blunder, it's a "major" blunder. This is a change in size, but it's more than just "big".
"Ultimate power" is more than just "big power" or "a lot of power", it's the "ultimate" power. It's all the power in the world, again this is more than just "big"

A "wisp of air" is something you can barely feel, if anything it's closer to {nu'} air than {mach}.
A "temporary peace" has nothing to do with size, but duration.

None of those nouns really describe things that have a physical size in the first place, so mach and tIn probably wouldn't apply anyway. SuS might have size in the sense of the area of ground it covers, perhaps. The idea that SuS'a' implies wind strong enough to knock a person or tree over isn't in the text (and the difference between wind that can knock over a tree and wind that can't is just a scale change). What would be the difference between a "major blunder" and a "big mistake"? I think you may be reading too much into the words used in the examples. Saying that a SuSHom would be closer to nu' than mach appears to be entirely based on your own interpretation of the word "wisp".

Again, it's as if you're looking at the English glosses of a word without -Hom and the word with -Hom and assuming that all the different connotations of those English glosses carry over to the Klingon, as if they were specific definitions instead of just examples of how one might translate such a concept.

but when I read a word like {naQHom} I think of it as a {naQ} that can be smaller, and/or less important, and/or less powerful. It can be one, it can be all.

So you're saying naQHom can mean a naQ that is smaller, but not less important or less powerful. That's what "and/or" means.

Ultimately, this is my point: {-Hom} doesn't equal {mach}, and {-'a'} doesn't equal {tIn}, there is much more to the suffixes than those two words.

-Hom isn't synonymous with mach and no one said it was. -Hom can refer to diminutive aspects of things besides size (such as importance). But mach is one of the notions that can be expressed with -Hom, and there are examples (bo'DaghHom, naQHom) where it appears to be the only notion expressed with -Hom.