[Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Word of the Day: mach

[Will Martin]

I suspect that the canon samples we get are warped toward the use of {-Hom} instead of {mach} simply because most of the canon is focused on WORDS instead of lengthy expressions of meaning, as would be the norm if we sampled Klingon general communication instead of canon examples.

{-Hom} doesn’t really mean the same thing as {mach}. The latter simply refers to size. The former is a designate added to an existing noun in order to indicate that this is a less significant variation of the root noun. A creek is indeed smaller than a river, but it is also less significant. Think about the difference between a creek and a small river. Technically, they are the same, because both are smaller than a normal river, but when you think of the terms, you think of a small river as being somewhat smaller than an average river, but hey, IT’S STILL A RIVER.

Meanwhile, a creek is not really just a smaller-than-typical river. It’s a creek.

Klingon wouldn’t likely have a separate word for creek. They’d just call it a {bIQtIqHom}.

An emissary can be physically larger than an ambassador, but we’d still call the emissary {Duy} and we’d call the ambassador {Duy’a’}. It’s not all about size.

Unless it’s a knife...

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



> On Aug 31, 2015, at 10:18 AM, Steven Boozer <sboozer at uchicago.edu> wrote:
> 
>> Klingon Word of the Day for Monday, August 31, 2015
>> 
>> Klingon word: mach
>> Part of speech: verb
>> Definition: be small
> 
> bImach 
> You are small. KLS
> 
> mach SuvwI'pu' 
> Warriors are small. KGT
> 
> qIvo'rIt may'Duj mach 
> smaller version of a K'vort class cruiser. KBoP
> 
> {mach} is used surprisingly little in Klingon; most prefer the type 1 suffix {-Hom}.
> 
> SEE ALSO:
> QIv 		be inferior (v)
> run  		be short (in stature) (v)
> -Hom		diminutive suffix (N1): minor, little, small
> 
> tIn		be big, be large (v)
> nIv		be superior (v)
> woch 		be tall (v)
> Dun		be great (v)
> -'a'		augmentive suffix (N1): big, giant, major, great
> 
> 
> --
> Voragh
> Ca'Non Master of the Klingons
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Tlhingan-hol mailing list
> Tlhingan-hol at kli.org
> http://mail.kli.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol/attachments/20150831/bd1f9625/attachment.html>