tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Mar 09 02:50:12 2004
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{Hov'a'} pagh {Hov'a'}be'?
- From: "QeS lagh" <[email protected]>
- Subject: {Hov'a'} pagh {Hov'a'}be'?
- Date: Tue, 09 Mar 2004 20:49:28 +1000
- Bcc:
ghItlhpu' DloraH:
>pemHov, juHHov, Hov'a', ... and whatever else we can come up with that is
>based on Hov works ok for MODERN people; but before the sciences developed
>people did not know that the sun was merely another star. Do you believe
>that klingons, from the beginning of their existance, knew that the big
>bright thing in the daytime sky was just another one of those tiny specks
>of light in the night sky?
I don't know about {juHHov} and {pemHov} per se, because these are compound
nouns (I'm still of the SuStel mindset on this, viz. use a noun-noun
construction, not compound noun), but with regard to {Hov'a'}, here goes:
If we call the big bright thing {Hov'a'}, that means it's *not* just another
one of those tiny specks of light in the sky. It's a light in the sky that's
different (in this case, a lot brighter and more important to the Klingons
than any other). And if the ancient Klingons did watch the sky, they'd very
soon realise that as the light from the sun came on, the other little lights
went off. This would give the {Hov'a'} (for want of a better word) more
strength than the {Hovmey}. Surely the ancient Klingons would have realised
that since the sun's brightness affected the brightness of all the other
stars, it could very well just have been some light in the sky.
Moons are a case into themselves. If Praxis was big enough to be a mining
facility, and big enough that its explosion would contaminate Kronos's
atmosphere, then it probably wouldn't have had a stationary orbit. Thus
could it be distinguished from all the stationary specks of light from the
planet's surface, and therefore could be distinguished as {maS}, not {Hov}.
>They surely would have come up with a name for it before science told them
>it was merely another speck of light. And after they found out, would they
>have stopped using the old name their ancestors used? Yeah, it is
>possible.
>These constructions can function, but they are not the word for "sun".
I don't see why {Hov'a'} can't be a word for "sun". It may not be THE word
for "sun", but it's pretty well known that the augmentative suffix doesn't
just mean "big X". And have a look at {baHwI'} versus {matHa'}. One's a verb
+ suffix, the other's a two-syllable noun. But they both mean "gunner".
Also, along the lines of De'vID's "event horizon" argument, I'm not entirely
comfortable with using {Hov'e' bavbogh yuQmaj} every time I want to say
"sun".
To summarise: I'm happy with the argument that {Hov'a'} MIGHT not be the
word for "sun". But there are reasons why it COULD be, so I'm not happy with
dismissing it entirely as <<not the word for "sun">>. In addition, I think
it's useful in the absence of any other word; as far as I can tell, it fits
in with the whole idea of the augmentative.
In the absence of any other word, I'm going to continue using it (or maybe
{Hovmaj}, which looks to work just as well) until a better idea (or the real
word) comes forth.
Savan.
QeS lagh
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