tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 19 19:14:29 2002

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Re: Klingon WOTD: wagh (v)



ja' ...Paul:
>Am I correct in thinking there are distinct connotational difference
>between { lo'laH } and { wagh } (and similarly for { lo'laHbe' } and {
>qutlh }?  ie. something could be both valuable and cheap, while something
>could also be expensive and worthless...

Right.  {qutlh/wagh{ and {lo'laH/lo'laHbe'} are essentially orthogonal
concepts.  How much something costs is not a good indicator of how useful
it is.

>Keep in mind, the root { lo' } means "use".  { lo'laH } means valuable in
>terms of "useful", { lo'laHbe' } means worthless in terms of "unusable",
>no?

Not necessarily.  {lo'laH} itself is a root; it's not the same idea as the
verb {lo'} plus the suffix {-laH}.

[I was thinking about this while raking leaves this afternoon, and it
occurs to me that it resembles a verbified version of a compound noun {lo'}
"use" + {laH} "ability".  This ngerHom is slightly more appealing to me
than the idea that the verb {lo'} might have been a rare "two-way" verb
like {meQ} and {tagh} at one time, but isn't anymore.]

-- ghunchu'wI'


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