[Tlhingan-hol] KLBC: plural in nationalities

[John R. Harness]

Hi! I’m ‘arHa, the newly-minted Beginner’s Grammarian! Thanks for your
question, and for tagging your thread with KLBC. I’ll take a shot at
answering your questions before opening it up to the rest of the community
for consideration.


I am confident that I can clearly answer two aspects of your questions.
First of all, concerning making nationalities (or species names) plural, a
general rule applies: Pluralization is always optional. You can add the
<-pu’> if you think it is necessary, but you can always leave it off and
let context do the work for you if that is what you want.


Secondly, in phrases like <verengan Ha’DIbaH>, we are really talking about
a <Ha’DIbaH>, not a <verengan>. The <verangan> simply tells us information
about the animal; <Ha’DIbaH> is the main noun in the phrase. So, we would
use the <-mey> plural suffix because the <Ha’DIbaH> is incapable of speech.
Of course, one might use <-pu> for artistic reasons, say in a story about a
talking Ha’DIbaH, but that is not the norm!


As for what I think is your most central question, I’ll describe how I’d
approach it but admit that other speakers might have a clearer idea than me.

As far as I understand it, each of the ways that you have pluralized
<verengan Ha’DIbaH> is correct, but you may choose one way of saying it to
make subtle changes to what you mean. Normally, I think we would say
<verengan Ha’DIbaHmey> to talk about animals from Ferenginar. <verenganpu’
Ha’DIbaHmey> says the same thing, more or less, but you may be emphasizing
that the animals belong to a group of Ferengi. <verenganpu’ Ha’DIbaH>
suggests an animal belonging to several Ferengi.


It is my understanding that <verengan Ha’DIbaH> is, technically speaking, a
noun-noun construction. You can review the rules for this in section 3.4 of
The Klingon Dictionary.

Please let me know if this is unclear or sparks new questions!


[And since this is my first BG response I welcome input from other
speakers, especially on the last point!]

'arHa
Beginner's Grammarian



> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 10:59:26 +0200
> From: qunnoQ HoD <mihkoun at gmail.com>
> To: tlhIngan Hol mailing list <tlhingan-hol at kli.org>
> Subject: [Tlhingan-hol] KLBC : plural in nationalities
> Message-ID:
>         <CAP7F2cJjdy17sNpKAusgWoh=
> x4Cn2FUz+eSSHXCzK_ugp6RwpA at mail.gmail.com>
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>
> should i put the KLBC,the way i did ? if not,please tell me..
>
> anyway,I would like to ask about something that confuses me.
>
>
> in english one can say :
>
> the german people (plural)
> a german man/woman
>
> the belgian people (plural)
> a belgian man/woman
>
> the italian people (plural)
> an italian man/woman
>
> ..and so on
>
> on the other hand one can also say :
>
> the germans (plural)
> the belgians (plural)
> the italians (plural)
>
>
> in klingon when i say {verengan} does this mean both singular/plural
> depending on the context ?
> i can't understand when to say {verengan} and when {verenganpu'}.
>
> if i want to call a group of people <<ferengi dogs>> (my favorite klingon
> expression), should i say
> {verengan Ha'DIbaHmey},{verenganpu' Ha'DIbaH} or {verenganpu' Ha'DIbaHmey}
> ?
>
> ..which brings up another question
>
> if the plural suffix is to be put on the second word,should i use {-pu'} or
> {-mey} ? I mean the ferengi may be able to talk,but the dog isn't..
>
> cpt qunnoQ
>
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