[95507] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: [Tlhingan-hol] jolly?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Trimboli)
Wed Jan 9 09:06:20 2013
Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2013 09:05:51 -0500
From: David Trimboli <david@trimboli.name>
To: tlhingan-hol@stodi.digitalkingdom.org
In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.6.2.20130108124011.056f8dc0@flyingstart.ca>
Errors-To: tlhingan-hol-bounces@stodi.digitalkingdom.org
On 1/8/2013 3:46 PM, Robyn Stewart wrote:
>
> Digression alert: English has a habit of turning words that have a
> positive connotation into intensifiers that aren't necessarily positive:
>
> "A good distance to fall."
> "A fair amount owing."
> "A great distance to walk."
> "A mighty difficult problem."
> "A terrific headache." (But maybe that one was terror-ific before
> terrific became positive).
> "A jolly good fellow." (I never though of it that way before, but Felix
> is probably right).
>
> Is this common in languages? It's in Klingon, where the exclamation qu'
> is positive, even something could be qabqu'?
I suspect it's the reverse in Klingon: the intensifier -qu' led to the
slang word with a positive connotation qu'.
--
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/
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