Archive of Okrandian Canon
| Author | Marc Okrand, Roger “DloraH” Cheesbro |
|---|---|
| Date | 7 December 1998 |
| Summary | Various words for walls, floors, ceilings and roofs. |
| Title | Re: walls |
| Type | newsgroup posting |
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