tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Nov 13 16:41:11 1999
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Re: KLBC: *'amantIyaDo'* qegh
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>Date: Wed, 10 Nov 1999 10:40:49 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
>
>
>On Tue, 9 Nov 1999 18:17:23 EST [email protected] wrote:
>
>> jIHemqu'! "The Cask of Amontillado" vImughta'! boSuch 'e' vItungHa'.
>> http://www.dreamwater.com/dujhod/qegh.html
>> Qaghmey law' ngaSbej, 'ach 'oHmo' jIHem.
>>
>> - DujHoD
>
>In your glossary, you list "whither" as "to what place". I had
>always thought that "where" had this meaning and "whither"
>referred to DIRECTION rather than LOCATION. Hence the 1896
>reference in A. Austin's "England's Darling": "He roams
>abroad. Spying the where and whither of his foes." Similarly,
>the oft repeated lover's promise "Whither thou goest, I shall
>go," implies that I will follow in your direction more than the
>literal being in the same place. I will go with you even as you
>have no established place, but merely a direction.
>
>It gave a way of distinguishing between "Where is she?" and
>"Whither did she go?" You are in a place, but you go in a
>direction. You are not in a direction and you don't go in a
>place. You may go inTO a place, but you don't go in a place.
>
>Meanwhile, if this really is a distinction in the definition, it
>is lost in more modern dictionaries I've checked. Bummer. I
>always liked having a question word that had that distiction.
So far as I know, "whither" is, in fact, directional in meaning, meaning
"to what place", while "where" means (or rather, meant before it usurped
the meaning of "whither") "in what place". It's the remnants of the old
English/Germanic case-distinction among locative, dative, and ablative
(though English-scholars might use slightly different terms for these). So
you have "where"/"whither"/"whence" ("in what place"/"to what place"/"from
what place") and there/thither/thence and here/hither/hence...
Hmm. It sounds like that's what you're saying everywhere but in your first
sentence: "whither" IS "to what place", as in "whither thou goest" (TO
whatever place you go), "whither did she go?" (TO where, not where was she
when she did the going), etc. Which is what you say everywhere, except
your first sentence implies the opposite. Maybe that's a typo.
And the third member, of course, is "whence" like in "Go back whence you
came", implication being "TO whence you came", i.e. "to the place *from*
which you came", or "get thee hence" (go away FROM here), or the use of
"hence"/"thence" to mean, metaphorically, "because of this/that"
(i.e. "from this/that"). Sanskrit uses its "from" case like that too.
~mark