h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

see title - why is Klingon so hard to speak? was it designed as such?

Well since it's an evolving artificial language still and more words and expressions are being thought of, that's one primary reason why some people might think it's hard. Also most people would have problems with the sentence structure because most people speak a language that is subject-verb-object where Klingon is object-verb-subject. There are verb prefixes too that are imperative to a sentence and that are translated as ((pronoun of subject)) -- ((pronoun of object)) for instance if you were to write in Klingon, "You hit me" then you'd use the prefix "cho-" and the word "qIp" which is literally translated as "you-me hit" or if you wanted to tell someone to hit you then you use the prefix "yI" which is the same "you-me" construct but used for imperative sentences....then Mr Okrand came out w/ another dictionary like book that has slang phrases made out of "grammatically incorrect" uses of words and suffixes where the suffixes are sometimes used as words. So yeah it's kinda very hard knowing how to pronounce the letters and howw to translate complex sentences into Klingon in your mind. It's even hard for me to do that even when looking up in the dictionary while doing it. Oh and before I forget....there's also the comparison formula....there's a special "fill in the blank" sentense used specifially for comparison of anything as in "Your dk'tagh is sharper than mine."

Here I am 4 years later to answer your query. Well, for anyone browsing and coming across your question, here's the answer.

When Paramount decided to have a large amount of Klingon dialog in the 3rd Star Trek movie, they wanted it to sound like a real language so they hired a linguist (Dr. Marc Okrand) to create one. Since it was inteded to sound like a real, but alien, language, he created a full, but unique grammar. Therefore Klingon is not just a code, but a real language. Like any foreign language it can be difficult to grasp.

The good news is, that as foreign languages go, this one is actually pretty easy to learn. Most natural languages have many exceptions to the rules to strain your brain. Klingon is fairly consistent. Nouns and verbs never change spelling or form. They are instead altered by a consistent set of affixes. We do loose the benefit of cognates to help us learn, but instead we get a large number of wonderful hidden jokes.

Klingon isn't so hard once you get into it. It's just very different, so it is very confusing at first. Keep trying and the patterns will start to fall into place eventually.