[Tlhingan-hol] wovmoHbogh jan

[Rohan Fenwick]

ghItlhpu' ghunchu'wI', jatlh:
> {wovmoHbogh jan} isn't a word. It's a phrase that means exactly what
> the parts mean. There's no reason to give it a special vocabulary
> entry of its own.

jang Quvar, jatlh:
> I used to think similarly, but after TalkNow I realized that some word
> combinations indeed deserve their own entry:
> There's no reason? {wovmoHbogh jan} is translated as "light" (i.e. a
> device). Now if someone may search for a term "light", he should find that
> word.

I agree with ghunchu'wI' on that one. Having a single-word translation in English does not justify calling a phrase a word *in Klingon*, and we need to be really careful about what phrases should be considered useful units for the purposes of dictionary making. I think {wovmoHbogh jan} for "light" deserves its own lexical entry every bit as much as {Ha'DIbaH ghIH tIr ngogh je} does for "hamburger". Which is to say, not at all. There have to be borderlines and once you start letting in such semantically transparent phrases, how far does one go? Surely {Daghtuj gho, tIr chab bIDmey je} is a reasonable translation of "hamburger" too. Does that deserve a lexical entry too?

taH:
> Even if you decide {wovmoHbogh jan} should be omitted in the new words list,
> IMO it belongs in every well managed dictionary.

I respectfully disagree on that too. If you're building a canon database, absolutely, but a canon database isn't a dictionary. And if you're looking to maintain a thoroughly comprehensive dictionary along similar lines to the OED, sure, it's a good idea to use it as an example phrase or a compound, listed in a subsection under the verb {wov} or the noun {jan}. And it's a good Klingon translation of the English noun "light, lamp". But {wovmoHbogh jan} doesn't warrant its own lexical entry in a Klingon-English dictionary.

QeS 'utlh
 		 	   		  
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