tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 22 18:17:58 1996
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Re: Words from the wild
Dark Viper wrote:
>...but maybe someone could come up with a reasonable explanation as to
>why it appears to say "small dislike." I can only add one possible
>definition of this phrase: "The person SLIGHTLY dislikes the other
>person." That is not anything close to "love";...
Assume for a minute that <parmach> is an actual word. Lets try to
analyze it, thinking like Klingons. It could be argued (and I find it
fairly likely) that Klingons don't really like anybody. The positively
hate a lot of people, but for someone close, special, etc., they might
say that they "slightly dislike" them. Also, since Klingon is supposedly
an ancient, constantly evolving language, <parmach> could have originally
meant "small dislike" but has since expanded into broader meanings, such
as love. My personal vote goes to this last idea. The first English
example of this "phenomenon" I thought of was the word star. When
originally created, star meant those bright things in the sky at night.
Now, it also means famous person, as in a movie star. <parmach> now
means "love, with aggressive overtones," regardless of its original
compositional parts, which may or may not follow the "current" rules of
Klingon grammer.
-McReynolds