Re: Love (jIjegh!)

[Carleton Copeland <copeland@eycis.com>]

ja' ghunchu'wI':

>I don't know why you keep using the "no longer do something" phrasing for the
>suffix {-Ha'}.  That would be expressed using {-be'choH} or {'e' mev} or some
>similar construction.  {-Ha'} doesn't mean "stop", it means "un" or "mis" or "dis".

See below.

>I'm puzzled at your reluctance to accept {-Ha'} as able to express "do the  opposite 
>of" in general.

Au contraire!  It was my eagerness to accept it that got me into trouble in the first place.  I tried to apply the "do the opposite of" sense to /muSHa'/ and so establish that Klingon does after all have a verb *to love*.  My respondents were adamant that /muSHa'/ does not signify *love*, but rather the *undoing* of a prior state of hate.  I phrased this as *no longer hate* because the translations that were suggested--*un-hate* and *dis-hate*--are so unnatural in English.  If you hate something and then *undo* that hate, you *no longer hate it*.  At least that's my understanding.

Later, in a more tentative mode, I suggested that, "Perhaps, when appended to certain verbs, /-Ha'/ and /-be'/ don't just undo or negate the action but transform it into its opposite."  SuStel, who I thought had implied this in an explanation of /parHa'/, wrote to say he meant no such thing.  So, far from being reluctant to accept /-Ha'/ as *do the opposite of*, I had begun to think it was my own lonely and heretical position.  If you're going on record as endorsing it, at least with respect to "certain verbs"--e.g., /parHa'/, /QayHa'/, /tungHa'/--I'm relieved to have an ally.  (I haven't given up hope for /muSHa'/ either, but until this usage is supported in canon, I won't argue for it.)

qa'ral