tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 27 15:05:08 1996
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RE: how about lutbompu' = opera?
- From: "David Trimboli" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: how about lutbompu' = opera?
- Date: Wed, 27 Nov 96 22:50:01 UT
November 27, 1996 4:13 PM, jatlh 'orqut:
> As had been discussed, compounding existing nouns in Klingon is okay, and
> context should clear up any fuzziness in meaning.
Context must be *relied* upon to clear up any fuzziness. It won't necessarily
happen, though.
> However, I just realized
> that the word "Opera" is actually a plural (in Latin) for the word "Opus",
> which is a song. Therefore an opera is actually a story with many songs.
> So, lutbompu' would seem to be a logical alternative.
You're using the wrong suffix. {-mey} is what you want. If you don't believe
me, I quote TKW p. 15: {ta'mey Dun, bommey Dun.}
Arrgghh!! You don't really mean to suggest that the derivation of an English
word from Latin could actually be used to construct legitimate Klingon nouns,
do you? No offense intended, of course, but that's ludicrous.
Look, when someone hears the word *{bomlut}, what information does he get? It
has to do with song, and it has to do with music. Perhaps the ordering of the
elements may indicate that it's a sub-class of story rather than a sub-class
of song, but that's not at all obvious to me. We know, then exactly two
things.
Those two pieces of information are not very specific, and could be applied to
lots of different things. More information hasn't been given, and the
addition of other elements or suffixes by analogy with Latin doesn't make any
sense at all. {*bomlutmey} simply means "more than one *{bomlut}."
*{bomlut'a'} simply means "something bigger or more important than a
*{bomlut}."
It doesn't get any better than that. Really.
> Can you get
> away with pluralizing the first half of a compund noun?
Well, Okrand does add other *suffixes* to the end of the first noun in the
compound: {tIjwI'ghom}.-
-
SuStel
Beginners' Grammarian
Stardate 96908.8