tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Apr 27 16:52:21 1995

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Re: bIjatlh 'e' yImev

RE:  peH

The source is <peHghep>, true enough.  However, tantamount to a Klingon's
finding significance in "fath" of "father," as realistic as that false
finding proves to be, <peH> is a distinct syllable of a compound Klingon
word.  I can easily do the same process in Chinese.  When I see two
characters written in combination, I can distinguish singular meanings of
each.  Because I am bi-lingual in English and Mandarin, I have learned to
"feel" the nuances of words which do not translate discretely.

So....

The Klingon will discover after a little further research that "fath" was,
after all, a false assumption and move on to analysis of another kind.  Let's
keep looking at the Klingon language repository until we discover whether
<peH> (and similar extractions from compound words) have any discrete
meaning.  Marc Okrand has already warned  against just such extractions:
 viz. <jonta'> contains <jon> which may not have any discrete meaning related
to "engines."

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