tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 15 17:14:36 2002
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Ten Commandments
DantlhIgh wrote:
>in the Bible, "heaven" (singular, capitalised or not) usually refers to
>God's 'spiritual' realm; when talking about the firmament, the celestial
>skies, etc (our realm), it was usually pluralised - "the heavens". Usually.
Only in some English translations. In the Hebrew original, *shamayim* - a
dual form - refers to both heaven and sky (or to the heavens and skies, if
you prefer). Being dual, it cannot be further pluralized.
I haven't been following this thread, but lest one read too much into this,
note that some other common words which are singular in English, are dual
(e.g. *mayim* "water", *chayim* /khayim/ "life", *Yerushalayim*
"Jerusalem") or even plural (*Elohim* "God") in Hebrew.
One of the interesting things in learning foreign languages, to me at
least, is discovering these words, which are plural in one language but
singular in another and vice versa. For example, the Russian word for
money is *den'gi* (m. pl.). Most Russians would draw a blank if you asked
them for the singular of *den'gi*. (It's been suggested that this is one
of the few words borrowed into Russian from Mongolian during the Mongol
occupation in the Middle Ages. It may be that the word isn't actually
plural in Mongolian, but simply ended in /i/, the common plural ending for
masculine nouns in Russian.) You can't read too much into this sort of
thing however interesting it is from an historical or etymological point of
view.
Klingon has a few of these, but AFAIK we've never seen {chal} "sky" used in
the plural {chalmey} or even translated as "skies".
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons