tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jul 24 06:24:53 1994
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Re: re shrubbery
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: re shrubbery
- Date: Sun, 24 Jul 94 18:21:24 EDT
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>; from "Susan Farmer" at Jul 23, 94 2:35 pm
According to Susan Farmer:
>
>
>
> I don't have the TKD handy, but the difference in a tree and a shrub is
> *not* the size. You can have dwarf trees, and giagantic shrubs.
> Botanically, a shrub is a woody plant with an indeterminate braching
> pattern. (Whereas a tree has a specific or determinate branch pattern)
>
> Susan tIHaDwI' (who is contemplating Tevram as a name (saw it in a print
> queue at work and
> thought it sounded
One of the most common misunderstandings in Klingon is the one
that the suffixes {-'a'} and {-Hom} are related to size. If this
were true, we would have no need of the adjectival verbs {mach}
and {tIn}. The diminutive and augmentative suffixes CAN refer to
size, but they more properly refer to SIGNIFICANCE. I would
suggest that a shrub is a lot like a tree, except that it is
rather less than a tree, and so I use {SorHom}. If I were merely
referring to a small tree, I'd use {Sor mach}.
If I were referring to a Giant Sequoia, I would use {Sor'a'},
but not just because it is big. It is also ancient. To stand
before a being that is between 2,000 and 3,000 years old is
very special. There is a very special spiritual silence that
came over me when I saw them, and so, a Sequoia is not merely
{Sor tIn}. It is {Sor'a'}.
charghwI'