tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 09 10:50:14 1999

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RE: KLBC -ngan usage



jatlh juDmoS:

> nuqDaq De'vam tu'lu'  ?

vIQIj . . .

> neH yuQmeH SeghmeH 'ej  lo'taH 'a' ?

I think I know basically what you're asking (the English helped), but I
really don't know how to fix this sentence. I'll try my own version:

chay' mu' <ngan> lo'lu'? nuqDaq chut vISamlaH?

> (I think I have that right...I want to know where the 
> rules governing usage of the -ngan (inhabitant of) 
> suffix are located, and if it is used only with planets 
> to describe races.)

<ngan> is a noun, not a suffix. It happens to get squished together with
other nouns to form compounds a lot, but it is still a noun in its own
right. There are really no special "rules" for <ngan>. We do have lots of
examples of compounds with <ngan>.

tlhIngan
tera'ngan
vulqangan
verengan
'orghengan 'orghenya'ngan joq
etc.

When talking about a place and its inhabitants, it's never wrong to just use
the two nouns to talk about a person:

SaQej ngan - inhabitant of Sakrej
Qargh ngan - inhabitant of the fissure (probably some sort of little
critter)
Deb ngan - Desert inhabitant
etc.

It *may* also be possible to make a compound noun with <ngan> if the place
name makes sense. <SaQejngan>, <voSpeghngan>, etc. I'm not advocating this,
but you will certainly be understood, and I don't think a lot of people will
complain.

In general, compounds with <ngan> don't identify the person as a specific
species; they tell you where he's from. However, a lot of common <ngan>
nouns do identify species because the species is so strongly associated with
the place. All Romulans are <romuluSnganpu'>, for example, whether they live
on Romulus or not. Would a human or Bolean living on Romulus be a
<romuluSngan>? I honestly don't know, but I suspect not. If, however, you
ran across a planet, say <bIrDon>, with a diverse population of many
species, I suspect a <bIrDon ngan / bIrDongan> would be anyone who lives on
<bIrDon> or was born there, not specific to any species.


pagh
Beginners' Grammarian

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