tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 24 04:18:05 1994
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Re: open can of worms
On Tue, 23 Aug 1994, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
I've seen numerous responses, but I have yet to receive the original post.
> >According to [email protected]:
>
> >For THAT matter, what equivalent exists in English? "Feed him
> >and give him something to drink!"? "Feed him and make him
> >drink!"? "Feed him, and let him drink!"? While I do see this as
> >an omission in Klingon, I think English has the same omission.
> >I also know of no single verb for this in French or sign
> >language. Okay, polyglots, there's a challenge for you. What
> >languages have a liquid equivalent to the verb "feed"?
In Russian, to give or provide water to something is <poit'> (imperfective
aspect) or <napoit'> (perfective aspect). I guess you could use this
for any other liquid as well.
If you wanted to say "Water it!" (as in, "Water my horse!"), you could
say, <<napoite!>> (This is just one example, Russian has several imperative
conjugations you can use.) Russian verbs in general are very expressive
and convey much more information and shades of meaning than you can
get in English. The Russian language has many times more verbs than English
does, but on the other hand, Russian, like Klingon, does not have any
words that mean "is, am, or are".
yoDtargh