tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Aug 03 11:50:01 2003
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Re: be'Hom loDHom je
At 01:33 PM 8/2/2003 -0500, naHQun wrote:
>alright, I know that <be'Hom> is girl
>and that <loDHom> is boy
>and like wise <be'> and <loD> are male, female/man, woman
>respectively.
>And <-Hom> is a diminutive suffix; which all makes sense.
>
>But it would also make sense that since we have a <be'> and a <be'Hom>
>to have a <be''a'>
>
>How would that be perceived/translated?
You really should have been at the qep'a' this past week :-) - we had an
entire panel/discussion time for the {-'a'} and {-Hom} noun suffixes and
how different people might interpret them differently. You could wait for
Lawrence to write something for a future issue of HolQeD ('e' nablaw'
ghaH), and that will give you more insight to this.
The existance of {be'Hom} doesn't necessarily imply that {be''a'} is
equally as common a word; we have the word {'uj} (a distance of about 35
centimeters) and {'uj'a'} (a distance of 9 {'uj}), but not {'ujHom}.
Before you read below what I think {be''a'} might be, consider what *you*
think of when you hear {be''a'}. I'm sure the grammarians that were on the
panel from the qep'a' will have more to add :-)
For this specific example, with no other context, I might say that {be''a'}
would be an older, more respected woman of a community, since {be'Hom} is a
younger, less matured woman. Or maybe {be''a} refers to a female superhero
(I could think of {loD'a'} as "(a) superman"). Or maybe {be''a'} could be a
beautiful, ideal woman that makes your jaw drop, e.g. {be''a' ghaH matlh
be'nal'e'!} "Now Maltz's wife, *she* is a *woman*!" Hmmm, although that
meaning could be covered by {be'na'}.
- taD