[Tlhingan-hol] Klingon Word of the Day: van bom

[lojmIttI'wI'nuv]

My point is you don’t say, “I have a ten pencils,” and you don’t say, “I have hundred pencils.” You say, “I have ten pencils,” and you say, “I have a hundred pencils.” All this is just with the singular. All of these interesting contrasts disappear with plurals. I have tens of pencils and I have hundreds of pencils.

The focal point is that a singular ten needs no article or number, but a singular hundred does, as does the thousand and million and billion, etc. I could see Okrand intending to reverse that interesting little tidbit of English numbering, though he might not remember to carry it through with canon. It’s one of those deeply ingrained things that nobody taught you directly. You don’t find it in textbooks. You just know it from your earliest lessons in speaking English.

Like that thing about the three different ways that “-ed” is pronounced in English, depending on what it follows. 
1. Treated (ed). 
2. Talked (t). 
3. Tugged (d).

Nobody intentionally taught you that, but you can put “ed” on the end of words you’ve never heard before and know which of these three ways to pronounce “ed”.

(Thanks, Lawrence, for pointing that out, years ago.)

This thing about putting a number or article in front of powers of ten, except for “ten” is one of those things.

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



> On Mar 24, 2016, at 12:31 PM, Steven Boozer <sboozer at uchicago.edu> wrote:
> 
> I have a hundred pencils,
> I have hundreds of pencils.
>  
>  
> From: lojmIttI'wI'nuv [mailto:lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com <mailto:lojmitti7wi7nuv at gmail.com>] 
> Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2016 10:50 AM
> 
> In English “ten” stands alone, while “hundred” doesn’t. I have to say “one hundred” to mean “100”.
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