Author Topic: Halah (flower) vs halahi (tree that can blossom)  (Read 4600 times)

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KingAlanI

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Halah (flower) vs halahi (tree that can blossom)
« on: January 09, 2014, 10:38:31 pm »
Halahi seems to be the correct plural form of halah (flower) but halahi is given a separate definition, and I don't see any irregular plurals listed for flower

Qvaak

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Re: Halah (flower) vs halahi (tree that can blossom)
« Reply #1 on: January 10, 2014, 12:12:43 am »
I more or less just answered to this on another thread. Yes, some word derivations are kinda weak at differentiating the words and the difference gets often lost. That's a bit crazy. But it's kinda good to make at least some difference. New meanings can be also achived by a "zero derivation", where the words are not altered at all - they just get new meanings.

I think it's likely that etymologically halahi is just a plural of halah, which has broken into a separate meaning for "flowering tree" and while doing that been also simplified into an inanimate declension pattern (which, remember, does not explicitly mark plural, so halahi means both "tree" and "trees").

- flowerflowerstree(s)
nominativehalahhalahihalahi
accusativehalaheshalahishalah
genitivehalahihalahihalahi
allativehalahaanhalaheahalahaan
ablativehalahoonhalahoahalahoon

It's a coin toss, if the difference is apparent.
« Last Edit: January 10, 2014, 01:00:13 am by Qvaak »
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KingAlanI

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Re: Halah (flower) vs halahi (tree that can blossom)
« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2014, 10:50:00 am »
Yes, you just covered it under 'Knight Of Flowers' in my phrase thread.
ah, so this is an admitted confusion in the language, it's not just me.
flower(s) as animate and tree(s) as inanimate does clear it up a bit, I didn't notice or realize the impact of that part of the dictionary entry.