tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 07 07:21:47 1994

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Re: The suffix -ghach



>Date: Sun, 6 Nov 1994 19:39:03 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: "...Paul" <[email protected]>

>This is the way <I> have basically been going with -wI' and -ghach (and I
>think it's pretty close).

>-wI' is simple, it's like adding "-er" to the verb, just as it says in TKD.
>HoHwI' is HoH + wI', and means "killer".  Klingon, however, is not specific
>(and English isn't either, really) as to whether or not a HoHwI' would be a
>person or thing which kills, or a thing that would be USED by a person to
>kill something.

>-ghach is really completely different.  Okay, not completely.  But pretty
>different.  -ghach is used to create something along the lines of the phrase
>"the act of <verb>ing".  HoHghach would mean "killing", as in "the act of
>killing".  In English, this doesn't always translate over.  But to use the
>pure English example of "commend", adding -ghach would create something like
>"the act of commending", or "commendation".

Okrand says, in the interview in HolQeD 3.3:

  "... So -ghach means something like condition of being X, if X is stative
  Or action or process involved with, or maybe result of the action, but
  the process involved with Y where Y is, for lack of a better term, an
  active verb."

In case that helps any...

>The other question that isn't answered is whether or not verbial prefixes could
>be used on a -ghach construction, which would make something like "you killing
>him is bad" as simple as "qab DaHoHghach", but I don't think anyone here would
>really say that would be correct.

Okrand says that would be "weird" (actually, he says it would be "even
weirder", comparing it to base verb + -ghach, which he says would be "okay,
but weird).  "Not unheard-of," says he, but an eyebrow-raiser.

Now, can we say "mughojmoHwI'" for "my teacher"? :)

>..Paul

~mark


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