tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Feb 12 14:37:04 1999
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RE: be'
- From: "Andeen, Eric" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: be'
- Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 15:30:54 -0700
jatlh muHwI':
> I just thought of this:
> {be'} is a "female",
> {be'Hom} is a "small female", thus a girl.
> Would {be''a'} be a very old female?
Klingon is a natural language, full of weirdness and inconsistency. <-Hom>
and <-'a'> are opposites, but you can't just blindly assume for any noun
there is a <X-Hom> -> <X> as <X> -> <X'a'> relationship. As was pointed out
recently on startrek.klingon, although an <'uj'a'> is definitely nine
<'ujmey>, it does not follow that an <'ujHom> is a ninth of an <'uj>.
<be'Hom> is defined as "girl", but even without that, it's fairly obvious
what a <be'Hom> is - someone who is not quite a woman. She's younger,
smaller physically, less wise, less able to function in the adult world, and
just qualitatively not a woman. Note that, unlike English, I would not use
<be'Hom> to describe anyone past puberty unless I meant to be derogatory.
This is just my own opinion, but it seems fairly justified.
A <be''a'> would be someone who is "more" than a woman. What does that mean?
Is she physically larger? Older? Somehow more "womanly"? No obvious meaning
comes to mind. When I hear <be''a'> without any context, I would think of a
woman who is somehow "great" - Madame Curie, Queen Elizabeth I, or Joan of
Arc, perhaps.
pagh
Beginners' Grammarian