tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Mar 30 08:13:09 1999

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Re: qul tuq



: ja' pagh:
: > wa' qul wIghajchugh maH vaj juHmey law' DImeQlaH.
: 
: "If we ten have one fire, then we can burn many homes."

Forget the "ten".  Using the pronoun in addition to the verb prefix {wI-}
stresses the subject {maH}: "If *we* have one fire ..."  The fact that
{maH} "we" and {maH} "ten" are homophones is apparently a coincidence.
BTW, {maH} is a combining form, used with the integers - {wa'maH} ten,
{cha'maH} twenty, {wejmaH} thirty, etc. - and doesn't occur independantly,
so far as we've seen.  I don't know whether ?{maHmey} "tens", ?{vatlhmey}
"hundreds" are kosher.  Perhaps not.  As Okrand tells us in CK, "Klingons
may be inaccurate but they are never approximate."

Since you brought it up, I'm also not quite sure how to say things like "we
ten", "the ten of us" vs. "ten of us".  In English the first two are simple
apposition (ten out of ten), so {maH wa'maH} or {wa'maH maH} might be fine
even though we've never seen an example in canon; the last however is
partitive (ten out of a larger number) and is more complicated.

: Well, maybe. I don't see the point of burning a lot of homes, though.

I assume pagh meant this as a variant of the proverb:

	qaStaHvIS wa' ram loS SaD Hugh SIjlaH qetbogh loD
	Four thousand throats may be cut in one night by a running man. 

Even though you only have one fire (a single torch?) available, if you're
determined and resourceful you can nevertheless cause an impressive amount
of damage.
 
: quljIb


-- 
Voragh                       
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons



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