Re: Replying to Rodlox (Re: Spanish-related question ((q)SVO ?) and obliques)

On Sep 22, 2004, at 9:10 PM, Roger Mills wrote:
>> So, in Arabic, for example,
>> you have "maa" meaning "what" and "man" meaning "who", and those are
>> WH-words.   All yes/no questions, though, begin with the particle
>> "hal"
>> (similar to your "que").   So, an example:
>> hal tatakalam al-?/arabiija?
>> /Q you-speak Arabic/
>> "Do you speak Arabic?"
>> "hal" above, like "que", just lets the speaker know that the phrase is
>> a question.
> Does "hal" mean anything else in its own right, or is this just a
> coincidental homophone? It occurs (borrowed I'm sure) in
> Malay/Indonesian,
> meaning "case, instance, (indefinite) thing, affair"-- e.g. pada hal
> itu 'in
> that case', hal ini berat sekali 'this matter is very serious' etc.
I'm pretty sure it just works as the question marker.  There is another
word, /X\a:l/, with pharyngeal H instead of glottal h, though.  I'm not
sure what exactly it means by itself, but the greeting _kayfa alHaal?_
means "what's up?", literally something like _how is the |Haal|_?


-Stephen (Steg)
  "rest / rest and listen / rest and listen and learn, creideiki /
   for the startide rises in the currents of the dark /
   and we have waited long for what must be..."
      ~ _startide rising_ by david brin