tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 14 02:09:59 1996

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Re: Klingon-American :(


>I noticed a while ago that American usage showed in the presence of
>these two words from TKD:
>
>veng            city
>vengHom         village
>
>Now, normally one has three graduations of settlement size..village,
>town, city. So far as i can tell, Americans don't have towns...they seem
>to call everything a 'city'

>Niall Hosking

Actually Americans *do* have "towns".  The term in its strict sense,
however, doesn't mean a collection of houses and shops, etc. like a city or
village.  It is a shortened version of "township", which is the unit of
government for an area of approximately 36 square miles, six miles by six
miles.  I believe that in most states, there is a minimum population
requirement, but it must be quite small, because I know of a couple of
townships with only four or five households scattered around in them. All
incorporated communities, even as small as 50 or so people, have the title
of city in a legal sense, while the term "village" is a thing of the past.
The difference, when there was a legal distinction, was that a village was
managed by a board of directors with a president; a city is managed by a
city council with a mayor.

Therefore, in *American English* terms, veng has no relevance to the "town"
entity. vengHom works for "village" as found in TKD.  But veng is the word
there for "city."  The problem I see with using veng'a' for large city is
that in other cases adding -'a' doesn't just mean "larger".  It changes the
meaning of the word to something different.  Like juH'a' meaning castle or
mansion, while juH means house.  juH'a' doesn't just mean a larger house.

Maybe veng'a' should mean county or state or province...

wIghbe'

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