tlhIngan Hol DajatlhlaH'a'?

[Radagast revived]

Who speaks klingon? Who wants to learn? Who have resources? I would like to learn it myself and am a complete novice (I probably made a mistake in the title). Can we have a practice thread?

[Bristel]

Qapla' batlh je! (Success and honor!)

[Radagast revived]

I did make a mistake in the title, I used an intransitive verb form for "speak", but the language is the object!

[Radagast revived]

nuqneH Bristel. tlhIngan Hol DaHaDrup'a'?

[Bristel]

nuqneH Bristel. tlhIngan Hol DaHaDrup'a'?

tlhIngan Hol jIyajbe'. naDevvo' yIghoS!

:storms off:



No, I tried to learn it a while ago, but I just remembered a few phrases, and I probably got "I don't understand Klingon" wrong.

[Radagast revived]

Lets try to analyze our sentences then? (I am going to be amazed if not a single Klingonist is on the board though).

da-jathl-aH-'a'
2sSubj/3Sobj-speak-can-Q
"do you speak it?"

Da-HaD-rup-'a'
2sSubj/3Sobj-study-ready-Q
"are you ready to study it?"

nuq-neH
what-want
"What do you want?" (A greeting, which is probably the reason it is not grammatically consistent)

[Pogostick Man]

loQ tlhIngan Hol vIjatlh vIneH! tlhIngan Hol DaghojmeH Dalo'bogh cha' paqmey vIghaj.

[Radagast revived]

loQ tlhIngan Hol vI-jatlh vI-neH! tlhIngan Hol Da-ghoj-meH Da-lo'-bogh cha' paq-mey vI-ghaj.

slightly Klingon language I.it-speak I.it-want! Klingon Language you.it-learn-in.order.to you.it-use-which two book-pl I.it-have
"I want to speak a little klingon! I have two books that you use in order to learn the Klingon language."

Right?

[Pogostick Man]

loQ tlhIngan Hol vI-jatlh vI-neH! tlhIngan Hol Da-ghoj-meH Da-lo'-bogh cha' paq-mey vI-ghaj.

slightly Klingon language I.it-speak I.it-want! Klingon Language you.it-learn-in.order.to you.it-use-which two book-pl I.it-have
"I want to speak a little klingon! I have two books that you use in order to learn the Klingon language."

Right?

HISlaH! (Although I meant to say "I speak a little Klingon", changing it from an earlier sentence but leaving in the "vIneH", but that's my fault.)

[masako]

This thread on the CBB has been somewhat interesting to follow.

[Radagast revived]

As I read the grammar in Okrand's "Klingon Dictionary" I am becoming increasingly underwhelmed. It is certainly not among the more complex conlangs, and the degree of detail in the description is really flat. I guess it stands out mainly because of being the first televised conlang and the created by a linguist with knowledge of non-Indoeuropean languages. I think I am going to write a review of the language.

maghoSchoHmoH maqeqmeH, Ha'!

[Nortaneous]

Speaking of CBB threads, proto-Klingon: http://aveneca.com/cbb/viewtopic.php?f= ... 62#p147662

[sangi39]

Speaking of CBB threads, proto-Klingon: http://aveneca.com/cbb/viewtopic.php?f= ... 62#p147662

And that's not even where it started Looking at it, there's like 4 different "Proto-Klingon"s in those two pages alone

[Xephyr]

A while back I digitized one of my copies of the Klingon dictionary (which comes with a grammar sketch), cause I had two for some reason. https://www.dropbox.com/s/jzmtwz4reypeq ... and%29.pdf . Might be useful to some people.

As I read the grammar in Okrand's "Klingon Dictionary" I am becoming increasingly underwhelmed. It is certainly not among the more complex conlangs, and the degree of detail in the description is really flat. I guess it stands out mainly because of being the first televised conlang and the created by a linguist with knowledge of non-Indoeuropean languages. I think I am going to write a review of the language.

I wouldn't take the Klingon Dictionary as representative of the conlang as a whole. Personally I'm surprised they let him include any grammatical information at all in their "dictionary". As a comparison, look at how much of a process it's been to get information on Dothraki released, and we know that that's a conlang whose grammar document is several hundred pages long, but unless you have access to Peterson's personal laptop......

[Radagast revived]

Which source would you recommend then for a better view of Okrands vision of Klingon? Even if it's incomplete we'll have to judge the language by what he has published - just like we review the published version of a book and not the authors notes.

May main problems this far is the too logical grammar combined with the too illogical romanization, and a cognitively disfunctional syntax which seems to be likely to be typologically unstable.

[masako]

Which source would you recommend then for a better view of Okrands vision of Klingon?

Other than Okrand himself? Maybe Britton Watkins, a conlanger/conscripter and language consultant on the latest Star Trek movie series.

Without either of those, you need to keep a few things in mind:

1) Klingon was not designed for linguistically literate people as much as is was for ST fans.

2) The orthography was a mash-up of Okrand wanting the language "to look alien" and James Doohan (Scotty) thinking that the Klingons needed to be stylistically divergent from most other alien races on ST.

3) A few years ago I collected a pile of info on tlhIngan Hol and lost it when my desktop crashed. Not too long ago I searched for as much of it as I could and from what I can remember/tell, absolutely nothing has changed. Mind you, there is a ton of non-canon stuff out there, but kli.org is not updating, Okrand himself hasn't really spoken on it in years, and most enthusiasts are content with the "dictionary" that Cev posted.

4) You're most likely not gonna be satisfied with what you find, but if you search the webs you will see ample amounts of sites that talk about the Klingon language.

qapla'

[Cúlro]

a cognitively disfunctional syntax which seems to be likely to be typologically unstable.

What exactly do you mean?

[Radagast revived]

I mean that is has a lot of redundancy in that it double marks all grammatical relations (both syntactically and morphologically), which in a natural language would very likely be unstable if spoken over time - particularly with the exotic choice of OVS order which also extends to clause subordination (I think there is a good reason that this doesnt occur much in natural languages). I think it kind of sits between two chairs.

Of course I appreciate that one would have to base any critique within a recognition of the purpose it was created for, but I think a linguistically founded critique is reasonable even though the language was created for a non-linguistic audience.

And by the request for sources I meant if Okrand had published anything other than the dictionary. Do Klingonists compile additional stuff from the show then?

[cromulant]

I believe a lot of the bizarreness of Klingon's phonology and syntax has been justified on the grounds that they're not human and have an alien psychology. Though what it is specifically about them that makes them prefer OS order and a quasi-random consonant inventory, I know not.

[Cúlro]

As far as I can tell, the general consensus is that SO is preferred over OS because there's a general preference for topic-comment order - ie old info first, new info last - and S is the grammatical role most often associated with topic and so the order gets interpreted as being S first. I could buy the premise that an alien psychologically might lack that preference/tendency for new-old order.

The redundant syntactic/morphological marking does seem odd though.

[cromulant]

The redundant syntactic/morphological marking does seem odd though.

Are you referring to the fact that Klingon has both strict word order and polypersonal agreement on the verb? Because that is not at all uncommon. SVO languages that mark both the A and P on verbs are as common as dirt. A+P verbal person marking seems to be the dominant type among OVS natlangs as well.

http://wals.info/combinations/81A_102A#2/16.7/148.6

[Cúlro]

I was referring to what Radagast said

I mean that is has a lot of redundancy in that it double marks all grammatical relations (both syntactically and morphologically), which in a natural language would very likely be unstable if spoken over time - particularly with the exotic choice of OVS order which also extends to clause subordination

[masako]

http://www.klingon.org/smboard/index.php?board=6.0

That forum seems like a wonderful place to get a wealth of information on how Klingon is being used and has changed since Okrand's books.

[masako]

http://www.frathwiki.com/Klingon/lexicon

Relevant.

[DePaw]

My mum and I have translated several songs and poems into Klingon for fun, she's even performed some at her folk club, people love it!