[Tlhingan-hol] jolly?

[David Trimboli]

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/