the carpet covers the floor (email, 1/09/2012)

lay a carpet (email, 1/09/2012)

(MO email to Lieven, 1/09/2012):  A carpet or a rug is tlhIm.  When you lay a carpet, you don't use the verb mutlh; the appropriate verb is vel ("cover, coat, mask").  One can say rav vel tlhIm ("the carpet covers the floor"). To say "lay a carpet," one says "use a carpet to cover the floor," or rav velmeH tlhIm lo'.  The person who lays the carpet is a velwI' (literally "coverer, coater, masker").  You might think that the velwI' is the carpet itself.  That would make sense, but it doesn't work that way.  Maltz commented that Klingon rugs are primarily decorative.  The idea of a fabric floor covering being thick or soft was just bizarre to him.  If you did say tlhIm mutlh ("he/she assembled a carpet"), that would mean there were pieces of fabric (or squares of carpet?) that got put together (sewn together?) to make a carpet or rug.  tlhIm is commonly used for a fabric wall hanging (that might, for example, have a picture of the Klingon emblem on it).  If a piece of cloth is displayed at the end of a pole, it is considered a joqwI' ("flag"); a tlhIm covers some sort of surface.

Finally, tlhIm can also mean "blanket." Maltz said that Klingons generally don't use blankets (he certainly doesn't), but he's seen them and, if you have to call them something, tlhIm is it."

(st.k 3/23/1998):  Thus DIrmey "skins" and veDDIrmey "pelts" are not (or, perhaps better, are no longer) body parts, but rather are materials from which things (clothing or blankets, for example) may be made.

SEE ALSO:

no' DIr                 ancestor hanging (n)

joqwI'          flag, banner (n)

HuS                     hang (v)

mutlh           construct, assemble, put together (v)

jom                     install (a device), equip (v)