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

Entry: The Klingon Language - A739145
Author: Hoovooloo - U114627

I mentioned the Klingon language in my entry on Anoraks, then realised that there isn't an entry on it. So here it is. Q'pla!

Fascinating!

There may be some links worth adding from this Guide Entry - A382240

Most of the links in that are to various pages in the KLI. I've given the KLI address, the interested reader will be able to find the rest from there.

I've added the link to the artificial/model languages entry though.

H.

Added a paragraph about the linguistic in jokes which are *very* well hidden among the vocabulary and structure of the language. If anyone knows of any more than the two I've pointed out, I'd be very interested to know...

H.

Seems good to me , held my interest despite not being a sci fi fan at all.

i'm glad you wrote that entry on anoraks......it has certainly resulted in a significant amount of material heading for the edited guide.

excellent entry, well done.

from a trekker point of view i have never understood the 'universal translator' i know it was a plot necessity because otherwise the 'five year mission' would have got no further than

"hflajkhu"
"I am Captain Kirk of the Federation Starship Enterprise"
"kn jnfuisdjn a9udjfn sdjf q 348 8y96%W^UW mg "
"Pardon?"

and it would have been rather dull.

BUT, how can a universal translator possibly ever be a reality when so much of language is based on idioms and slang and cwollokwialthingiesthatwordicantspell and is not ordered enought for a computer to sort through however smart it is.

weirds my whole brain out man

FABT

Very true. The funny thing is, for most of the progress of the series, they hardly ever mention the UT, usually, it seems, because they know that whatever they say about it will sound hokey and unbelieveable.

Now, however, they have (in my view rather inadvisedly) got an character on the new "Enterprise" whose main function is communication - which is to say getting the UT to work. And EVERY TIME it works, you just want to go "No WAY! That'd never work!" Shame, really, I quite like it apart from that.

An interesting thing about Klingon (which doesn't really fit in the entry) - one of the books mentions that many Klingons speak English, and that officers on ships will often do so to (a) keep their conversations secret from the uneducated listings and (b) show off their erudition. I love these sorts of rationalisations of things that they drop in to explain stuff like the fact that although you *do* hear dialogue in Klingon, you hear far too much in English to be realistic.

H.

i *like* that explanation.

i also vaugely remember something about a klingon programming language (Ask MaW, he'd know) which runs on a principle of great violence. there must be a web site on it somewhere,........

FABT

ok, i just put kligong in the search engine.





i might be gone a while....


FABT

actually i put klingon in.

http://www.trektoday.com/news/070800_05.shtml

tells us about the fact that the language exists..and takes us tooooooo

http://www.geocities.com/connorbd/varaq/

so there you go.












do i qualify as an anorak?

I thought I remembered the ridged brows and stuff from the first three series, most of which I have seen. I've also seen a couple of the movies, but didn't notice much difference.

A few nits which I am going to pick:

Para 5: Another idea to reinforce the idea..... Too many ideas. Also Star Wars used this trick first. My sister watched Star Wars in English with Spanish Subtitles in Venezuela, and noticed that she did not understand what was being said, adn that the subtitles changed format when Han Solo was talking to the alien in the bar.

'The extent of this achievement should not be underestimated, especially as the original Klingon dictionary points out that the language lacks a verb meaning "to be".' - Now *that* made me laugh out loud. I am still grinning.

It's a very good entry, informative and entertaining. I also like the entry on the Prisoner, btw.

Ben

Nit number 1 - correct. "idea" becomes "illusion"...

Nit number 2 - not *quite* correct. The creators of "Star Wars" did try to give Greedo (the green guy Han Solo shoots) an alien quality by having him speak a subtitled language - but the language he speaks is Quechua, a real indigenous language from the Andes, chosen because it sounds so different from most languages most viewers would be familiar with.



H.

Some of the languages in Star Wars were real ones, for instance there's some tribe in Africa that loved Sien Snubb (Lando's co-pilot in RotJ) because he spoke their language. Others are words cobbled together from a variety of languages. They like to use real words and sounds because it keeps things from sounding artificial.

I very interesting entry, well done. I have several comments to make though. In the further developments section you mention worf without mentioning who he. Perhaps you could introduce worf in the section where you talk about Star Trek:the next generation, as you mention worf there, but not by name (In the section 'The first "proper" language, you mention that there is a Klingon on the bridge).

You could mention briefly Elvish, in 'Lord of the Rings', as I think that Elvish was a 'prpoer' language, so in that respect is similar to Klingon. If that is the case, they are probably the only such languages developed for fiction, although I could be wrong.

You mention The next Generation, and Deepspace nine. Perhaps you could make it clear that TNG and DS9 are TV series.

You say that James Coohan plays Scotty, rather than Played.

Finally, have you got any statistics on the number of people who can speak Klingon? It might be interesting to see how many speakers there are, compared to other languages (in particular esperanto, another created language)

Anyway, I think this is a very good entry, and think it is destined to go into the edited guide.

OK... thanks for the comments.

Worf's name mentioned a little earlier.

Elvish mentioned briefly, although since Tolkien based it existing languages it's a slightly different sort of thing. He wanted a language that sounded ancient, Okrand wanted a language that sounded *alien*.

Does ANYONE not know that Star Trek is a tv series? There is a link from the first mention, so even if they don't they can click that and find out.

Stats on the number of speakers is a difficult one. For instance, nobody *really* knows how many people speak Esperanto. Estimates vary between 1 million and 5 million, which is a pretty wide margin. It depends how you define "speaker". As I say in the entry, *fluent* speakers of Klingon probably only number in the dozens at this time. But if you mean someone who would be able to say "hello", "goodbye", "I love you" and "gimme a beer" - which is all a lot of people NEED in another language - then it's possible that Klingon "speakers" number in the millions. There's no way to know, really, which is why I've steered clear of being specific.

For instance, most fans know that something that's pronounced "gach" (with the ch sounding like it does in the Scots "loch") is a dish of live serpent worms. But as to how many people would be able to put that word in a sentence, or more importantly distinguish the words "ghagh" (gargle), "ghaH"(he/she/him/her), "ghaq"(to contribute), "ghargh" (serpent worm), "ghegh"(to be rough), "ghIgh"(necklace) and "ghuH"(alert) without recourse to a book - not many I think.

One comparison I DID read of was made by Marc Okrand himself, who said that some academic had upbraided him for wasting his time when he could be usefully studying a real ancient language such as Hittite. He pointed out that right now, more people know Klingon than know Hittite - and that in itself is interesting.

H.

Oh yeah, and Two Bit? That guy's name is Nien Nunb.

I know 'cos I had a little plastic figure of him when I was a kid!

Cool factoid though, I didn't know that!

H.

"the Klingons, were basically swarthy, bearded men in leather jerkins" - I'd have said "sparkly jerkins"...

The worf reference is fine now. I also like the reference to Elvish. You seem to have misunderstood me about Star Trek being a TV series. You do mention that Star Trek itself is a Tv series, but you don't mention that 'Star Trek:The next generation', and 'Star Trek :Deepspace Nine' are TV series (rather than, for example, films), which is what I was referring to, not Star Trek itself being a TV series.

As for statistics, I didn't think about how hard it would be to estimate the number of speakers.