tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 14 10:38:57 1996
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Re: Klingon-American :(
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>Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 02:12:33 -0700
>From: [email protected]
>>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.
I think there's a problem of being really hung up on specific words here.
Stop thinking "ok, if veng equals city, then what equals town or village or
hamlet or township or borough or bivouac or a million other near-synonyms
in Your Favorite Language?" "veng" is not the word "city"; it's the
concept of a built-up(?) dwelling place of folks. The size and importance
is relative to what's under discussion. If you want to refer to such a
collection of homes and point out that it's relatively small or
unimportant, that's a vengHom. You could probably refer to the *very same
place* as both a veng and a vengHom in different contexts (say when talking
to someone who lives there and knows how big it is, it's just a veng. When
talking to someone from out of town/village/city/borough who needs the
extra information, it's a vengHom). It's it's a major gathering-place of
such dwellings, "large" in some sense (probably importance and/or
population; I probably wouldn't apply this to a huge sprawling township
with an enormous area but a small population scattered in it), that's a
veng'a'. And so on. Think concepts, not words.
>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...
No... You're contradicting yourself. The defining feature of "veng" to me
is that it's a collection of homes that in some sense work together and are
known by a collective name, perhaps, etc. Your definition seems to be
based on the American legal definition of "township" which is nothing more
than a plot of land. A veng'a' need not be physically larger than a veng.
Nor is a county or a province a city. A county or province is perhaps a
smaller version of a state or country (a wo'Hom??), since cities and
counties seem to be qualitatively different, while counties and countries
differ more in size and quantity. A veng'a' is a "great city." A city
that's more city-like than most. "Metropolis" might be a good translation
for it. It may be larger, it's probably more populous, likely more
crowded, and almost certainly more important in some sense.
~mark
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