tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Aug 30 08:46:06 1996

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Re: translation of "nonbeliever"


ghItlh ~mark:


> "HarHa'" I see as more likely to evoke the "wrongly" aspect of "-Ha'."  A
> HarHa'wI' believes *wrong*.  It's a more direct statement of disapproval
by
> the speaker: this person is at best misguided, at worst wrong-headed and
> even evil.  If I were trying to foment religious hatred against the
infidel
> heathens, I'd call them HarHa'wI'.
>
> So to me, all of these are in some sense "unbelievers," the question is
> just what flavor of meaning do you want to attach.


Oh. Darn. That just blows apart my own interpretation of {-Ha'-}.

Having read the original post and most of the thread I decided to fiddle
around with different verbs using all the "not" suffixes.

Obviously {-be'-} and {-Qo'-} don't cause me a problem.

However, I had finally decided last night that {-Ha'-} should be interpreted
as "undo" for MOST verbs but on those where that meaning is, errm,
meaningless it should mean "mis-" ...

For example, to put it on the end of {Har} would make perfect sense using
either translation.

But on the end of something like {jatlh} the only interpretation that makes
any sense is "misspeak" -- you can't really, after all, "did speak but now
does not speak" or "undo speaking" -- not without some other explanatory
material about having ones tongue chopped out, at the very least !!

So I'd theorised that {HarHa'} meant "one who no longer believes" (undone
believing ??) and that I would interpret it {Ha'} like this unless the
definition didn't make sense on the verb in question, where I would assume
"mis-" -- for example, attaching {Ha'} to {chIj} (navigate) wouldn't make
any sense as "undone navigating" (unless you've just shot your {chIjwI'}, of
course) but "misnavigate" (navigate incorrectly ?) makes good sense.


Have I made any good points here or just wasted bandwidth ?



nI'jaj yInlIj 'ej batlh bIHeghjaj.


Rob

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