KathAveara wrote:
I have tried to draw a connection to the apparent verb ahr 'enter' or 'go', from Gehn's speech to Cho in one of Riven's bad endings, speculating that ahro means 'be outside' or 'come inside'. Hence the ahrotahn, for which a better translation (in D'ni times, anyway) might be 'book-worlders, non-D'ni from the Ages', are literally 'those who are outside (D'ni), those who come into (D'ni)'.
I think Kath is onto something here
Gehn’s use of this verb comes after he says: .sekem shokhooteeom ‘you have your instructions’.* His final words to Cho are expressed quietly so the adverbial particle is hard to hear, but probably he says: .ahremah te
The directionality in this is presumably expressed by te ‘in, by, with’ and combined with a verb that is less specific about direction, like ‘go’; so that the resulting imperative phrase ‘go in!’ does mean ‘enter!' If ahr = ‘go’ then we might have an adjective *ahrah ‘gone’, comparable in etymology to adjective yimah ‘seen’ beside verb yim ‘see’.
This could have a potentially broad extended meaning. An example would be illustrated by colloquial English, where in referring to a recent (or imminent) departure one can say “he is gone” or more vividly “he is out of here.” If ahro is a derived verb based on this notion then its sense of 'being outside' might refer both to physical separation and also to notional difference, so that ahrotahntee 'those being outside, outsiders' comes to mean simply 'those who are different, others'.
* Note by the way that shokhoo ‘instruct’ is another of the subclass of D’ni verbs, such as taygahn ‘love’ or say ‘design’, that can be used as a noun without the addition of the suffix -tahv.
Shorah