tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 28 14:44:16 2002

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RE: qepHom, qep, qep'a'



Lawrence:

>>>>>>>>>
Actually, I disagree, though it may sound odd after my rant above. This is one of those few examples where it would be most interesting to examine the kind of connotative meanings that have emerged from Terrans who have acquired Klingon. Granted, there are few of them, but even so certain patterns of usage, agreed upon connotations, preferences among synonyms,and so on, have appeared.

A couple examples:

1) the general preference for using HIja' for "yes" (despite the potentially ambiguous homophonous imperative) over HISlaH. [Personally, I prefer HISlaH, and I've noted that Tad seems to as well. Hmm... maybe its a Pennsylvannia thing.]

2) choosing to use pI' over ror (or vice versa) for "be fat" when I know of no denotative distinction between the two.

Certainly there are more, but these quickly leap to mind.

Hmmm.. the more I think on this, the more the researcher in me wants to design a study to actually map these patterns of usage. Hmm...
>>>>>>>>>>

I'll add my favorite example - <'ach> is almost universally used in written Klingon, but <'a> is used about half the time in spoken Klingon.

pagh



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