tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 20 18:39:30 2003

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RE: no matter what happens...

Alan Anderson ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

ja'pu' pagh:
>I think <SISlI'> may work for some of the desert thunderstorms we get where
>I live. The rain starts abruptly, it rains hard for a short while, and then
>it stops. Sometimes they last as little as ten minutes, and sometimes you
>can even see the stormcloud passing overhead. I'd say this kind of rain has
>a definite stopping point.

ja' Voragh:
>Why not just use {loQ} "slightly, a little bit, briefly, short":  {pay' loQ
>SISqu'} or {pay' loQ jev}, etc.  That's what it's for.

jIQochqu'.  bIlughbe'.

He's not describing a slight rain.  He's describing the kind of
thunderstorm that starts, continues intensely for a time, then ends...all
in a reasonably predictable fashion.  When I was backpacking in New Mexico
25 years ago, there was a stretch of nearly a week when the rain would
arrive promptly between 1:00 and 1:15 in the afternoon, and stop shortly
before 1:45.  By the third day, we were joking as we hiked about the clouds
being full, 3/4 full, half full, 1/4 full, then empty.  {-lI'} would have
been perfect, but it wouldn't be invented until almost seven years later :-)

>I think this is a matter of viewpoint.  Do you really know when it starts
>what the "definite" stopping point of each individual thunderstorm
>is?  (E.g. This is a 10 min. storm, but that one is a 20 min. rain??)  Or
>is it just an informed guess based on experience?

Something doesn't need to have a known stopping point nailed down precisely
in time in order for the suffix {-lI'} to work.  It just has to be making
progress, rather than merely happening throughout a protracted period of
time.  Desert (and mountain) thunderstorms aren't like the kind you get
around Illinois -- their progress is often quite obvious.

-- ghunchu'wI'

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