[[
  [2009-04-14] added document header
  Style: <>=bold

  Type: newsgroup posting
  Date: 7 December 1998
  Title: Re: walls
  Author: Marc Okrand, Roger "DloraH" Cheesbro
  Summary: Various words for walls, floors, ceilings and roofs.
]]

From: Marc Okrand <mokrand@>
Newsgroups: startrek.klingon
Date: Monday, December 07, 1998 12:55 AM
Subject: Re: walls


Actually, there are several words referring to "wall":

An interior wall (such as a wall separating your living
room from your kitchen) is a <tlhoy'>.

An exterior wall (that is, a wall which separates the
inside of a building from the outside) is a <reD>.

For the interior side of an exterior wall, it is quite
common to use <tlhoy'>, but the phrase <pa' reD>, literally
"room's exterior wall" (<pa'> "room") is also heard,
referring to the wall in a room which faces outside (as
opposed to the other walls in the room whose other sides
are still indoors).

The wall around a city is a <yergho>, which is apparently
derived from <yer> "domain, holdings, territory" plus <gho>
"circle."

A wall which divides a territory into parts (such as the
Berlin Wall) is also called a <tlhoy'>, even though neither
side of it is the interior of a structure.  On occasion,
for clarity, such a wall is termed a <chevwI' tlhoy'>
"separator wall" (<chev> "separate," <-wI'> "that which
does [something]") or a <pIn tlhoy'>, literally "boss
wall," presumably dating back to a time when each
subterritory had a specific person in charge.

The phrase <pa' tlhoy'> "room's interior wall" is also
heard from time to time, but usually only when it is
necessary to distinguish the "interior wall" sense of
<tlhoy'> from the "separator wall" sense.


A <tlhoy'> "interior wall" need not be vertical.  In a
multistory structure, the stories are separated by what
Klingon architects and builders call a <tlhoy' SaS>
"horizontal wall" (<tlhoy'> "interior wall," <SaS> "be
horizontal").  The side of this "wall" which is the bottom
of the upper story is the <rav> "floor"; the side which is
the top of the lower story is the <rav'eq> "ceiling" (based
on <rav> "floor" plus <'eq>, an element otherwise unknown
(there is no evidence it is connected to <'eq> "be early"). [[").:=")).]]

<rav> "floor" is also used for the floor of a room on
ground level (or a basement floor, for that matter), even
though there is no corresponding <rav'eq> and no <tlhoy'
SaS>.

Similarly, though in general <rav'eq> "ceiling" refers to
the ceiling of a room that has a room above it, it may also
be used for the ceiling of a room on the top floor, even
though there is no corresponding <rav> and no <tlhoy' SaS>.
On occasion, though, the ceiling of the top floor is called
<pa' beb>, literally "room's roof" (from <pa'> "room" plus
<beb> "roof").  The term <beb> refers to the covering on
top of a structure.

Hope this helps your story.


TPO wrote in message <3660B2F0.20F8@rpa.net>...
>Marc, you here?
>
>I'm working on a literary piece that makes many references
to a wall or
>walls.
>Any ideas how I can handle this? (recast, metaphor, ...)
>
>DloraH

[[eof]]