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

Well, is there?

This question was prompted by a discussion about Tolkein's invented languages on another thread. I wondered if people actually learn these languages. I gather people learn Klingon. I don't understand why.

If you can learn Klingon, Welsh is a doddle.

Alji

Posting to h2g2 all day!

There are certainly people who have studied Tolkien's Elvish language and have produced dictionaries, grammars and so on. I don't know if any of them go to "Tolkien conventions" and talk to each other in it.

There are plenty of things that are just as useless as learning Klingon:

Playing almost any video game
Watching Coronation Street, Eastenders or your choice of Soap
Climbing a mountain
Listening to a rock band / orchestra / bearded tenor.

All of these things serve no purpose other than to keep us occupied and happy.

Yeah, imagine all that time you waste being happy when you could be earning money instead.

On an aside this reminds me of a time when my school suspended teaching for two days and instead offered various activities around the school and trips out to blackpool and alton towers etc.

Somehow I found myself wandering into a room of Trek enthusiasts doing quizes and yes, an opportunity to learn some klingon. At this time I had barely watched any sci-fi so was somewhat at a loss to follow what was going on but nevertheless it sticks in my mind when one of the people running the activity confided in us why his partner had no eyebrows (this is true!!) and then proceeded to bate him with phrases from klingon along the lines of "my dogs got no eyebrows. how does he smell. awful." much to the contenation of the eyebrowless person who after a while chased the other guy around the room beating him over the head with a clip-boad.

I suppose it's a blessing that they weren't exhibiting any model weapons or things could have turned bloody.

one of my friends wants his kids' (wrell when he has one) first word to be in kilngon. Just because he thinks it would be funny, his current partner doesn't approve

I wonder if it would look good on a CV, telling them that you speak Klingon.

It would probably look better saying you could speak a genuine second language-rather more useful to a potential employer, I'd think.

s are less useful than learning to speak Klingon as are little china ornaments of any description.

I'm sorry Plastic Squirrel - you knew you would probably get some sort of backlash from your posting didn't you so here it is:

That is not true about s!

It is a well know studied fact that stroking a cat (or another docile pet) can actually reduce the heart rate and blood pressure. Very useful in controlling stress levels.

Also - you can talk to your cat, tell them all your troubles and woes and they won't answer back. They'll just sit there and listen and purr occasionally (but usually just fall asleep) - much cheaper than a therapy session! And infinitely more useful than learning Klingon.

Let alone that 101 things you can do once they're dead

Less useful than Klingon?

Let's see...

I agree about the soaps.
What about feng shui, paperwork, the Turner prize, cats, astrology, homeopathy, paperwork, the Millenium Dome, rules of grammar, trying to rearrange the furniture when you have a wife, paperwork, fireworks, preaching to the converted, cold fusion, cold collation, tatoos, golf courses, paperwork and paperwork?

Did I mention paperwork? I did? Good.

How about finding out if their is an afterlife? The easy way to do this is to jump off the nearest and most convieniant cliff. The down side is that you can't come back, if their isn't one.

Filling out anything in triplicate.

How about this discussion?

Learning to speak Klingon could be very useful if...

- you plan on playing a Klingon in Star Trek, as pronunciation of your lines (if you get to speak any Klingon) will be a lot easier
- you plan on writing an episode of Star Trek or a Star Trek film which feature some Klingons speaking Klingon
- you want to design the Klingon computer displays in one of the more accurate episodes/films

Of course, few people will be doing that, so there's another most important reason

- fun!

Oh, and you can then insult people in Klingon (it's a good language for that) without then knowing what you're saying, although your tone of voice might come across. There's also a Klingon programming language called var'aQ which is even more useless because it's a horrible stack-based language and thus insanely hard to use compared to, say, Haskell.

And yes, there are more useless things than learning to speak Klingon, some of which have been mentioned above. But sometimes it's fun to do something totally useless just because you can.

Ah yes, learning how to swear in Klingon could be fun.

I think a great third of what I've learned in school so far is more useless than learning Klingon.

Let's see...

To find the volume and weight of a toilet roll if it was to be made of several metals. Now WHERE in my life would I think "Boy, I'm sure glad I learned how to find the volume of a toilet roll made in gold!"

The kingdom of Brunai.