tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Dec 29 17:58:01 2000

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Re: large and small



[email protected]:
> {nagh'a' tIn}, {nagh'a' mach}, {naghHom tIn}, and {naghHom mach}.
...
> (It's been mentioned here before that this is precisely the problem some
> people have with the Esperanto suffixes -eg- and -et-.)

And a kitten's claws (ungegoj) may be smaller than my nails (ungoj).

Perhaps it's the choice of example, too; there's not much semantic
difference between a pebble, a stone and a boulder in English - perhaps it
would be better to use examples which translate as quite distinct concepts,
like the {loD} and {loDHom} snipped above - but {loD'a'} doesn't translate
well, so another example may be preferrable.

I'm reminded of the ``Get Smart'' episode (the one where 86 & 99 meet for
the first time, if memory serves) where they're chasing all over New York
for Mr. Big ({loD'a'}). When they finally find him, he's a midget...


Jiri
-- 
Jiri Baum <[email protected]>
As we all know, real error messages have two parts:  a message code, and a
return code. Ideally, the message code is hexadecimal, the return code is
octal, and the manual explaining the error messages uses decimal. --r.h.f


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