[92195] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: [Tlhingan-hol] plural of "comb"?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Trimboli)
Mon Feb 13 11:52:24 2012
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:52:02 -0500
From: David Trimboli <david@trimboli.name>
To: tlhingan-hol@stodi.digitalkingdom.org
In-Reply-To: <F52986192E9FE346B0B7EF3D6F98E87711C19062@EXDB3.ug.kth.se>
Errors-To: tlhingan-hol-bounces@stodi.digitalkingdom.org
On 2/13/2012 8:41 AM, Felix Malmenbeck wrote:
>
>> jIb Ho'Du' means "hair teeth" - it's already plural in Klingon and so I
>> don't think it's possible to sensibly talk about {wa' jIb Ho'Du'}.
>
> Unless it's a set expression.
This is similar to English words like "scissors." You have "one pair of
scissors," not "one scissors." Or you have "the scissors" meaning one
pair of scissors. If I saw two pairs of scissors I would accept it if
someone pointed at the two pairs and called them "the scissors."
Does Klingon work that way? Who knows. Lacking any information I'd
assume that Klingons don't have a special way of talking about "a comb";
they can only talk about "hair teeth." Likewise a single hotel is "meb
pa'mey." But multiple combs are just even more hair teeth {jIb Ho'Du'}
bound into multiple sets, and multiple hotels are just even more guest
rooms {meb pa'mey} organized into multiple buildings or companies. If
you had one comb and called it {jIb Ho'Du'}, then got another comb and
called the pair of them {jIb Ho'Du'}, I wouldn't have a problem. If you
wanted to count combs, I'd have a problem (because we don't have
information on how Klingons count objects that are considered as plural
entities).
--
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/
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