The 'Klingon language' ('''tlhIngan Hol''' in Klingon) is the
constructed language spoken by
Klingons in the fictional
Star Trek universe. Deliberately designed by
Marc Okrand to be "alien", it contains many peculiarities, such as
Object Verb Subject (OVS) word order. The basic sound (along with a very few words) was first devised by
James Doohan ("Scotty") for ''. That film marked the first time the language had been heard on screen, all previous appearances of the Klingons being in English. Klingon was subsequently developed by Okrand into a fully fledged language.
Klingon is sometimes referred to as Klingonese (most notably in the '' episode "
The Trouble with Tribbles", where it was actually pronounced by a Klingon character as ), but among the Klingon-speaking community this is often understood to refer to another Klingon language that is described in
John M. Ford's Star Trek novels as
Klingonaase.
A small number of people, mostly dedicated
Star Trek fans or language aficionados, can converse in Klingon. Its vocabulary, heavily centered on Star Trek or 'Klingon' concepts such as "
spacecraft" or "
warfare", can sometimes make it cumbersome for everyday use — for instance, while there are words for "transporter ionizer unit" (''jolvoy') or "bridge (of a ship)" (''meH''), there is currently no word for "bridge (that you drive over)". Nonetheless, mundane conversations are common among skilled speakers.
History
Though mentioned in the original ''Star Trek'' series, Klingon was first used on-screen in '' (1979); for '' (1984), Okrand enlarged the lexicon and developed grammar around the original dozen words Doohan had created. It would be used intermittently in later movies featuring the original cast: in '' (1991),
translation difficulties would serve as a
plot device.
With the advent of the series '' (1987) – in which one of the main characters was a Klingon,
Worf – and successors, the language and various cultural aspects for the fictional species were expanded. In the '' episode ''
A Matter of Honor'', several Klingons speak a language that the
Universal Translator seems unable to translate, until one Klingon orders the others to "speak their (i.e. humans') language." Since it seems highly unlikely that an entire crew of Klingons were fluent in English, this suggests that Klingons use at least two separate languages or dialects, one which a Federation translator can translate and one which, either through some unknown factor or due to programming insisted upon by the Klingons, a translator cannot. The use of untranslated Klingon words interspersed with conversation translated into English was commonplace in later seasons of '', when Klingons became a more important part of the series' overall plot arcs.
Worf would later reappear among the regular characters in '' (1992) and
B'Elanna Torres, a Klingon-human
hybrid, would become a main character on '' (1995). Later in the pilot episode of the
prequel series '', "
Broken Bow" (2001), the Klingon language is described as having "eighty polyguttural
dialects constructed on an adaptive
syntax"; however, Klingon as described on television is often
not entirely congruous with Klingon developed by Okrand.
Language
The Klingon language has a following and numerous reference works. A description of the actual Klingon language can be found in Okrand's book
The Klingon Dictionary (Published by Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster, 1985, second edition with new addendum 1992, ISBN 0-671-74559-X). Other notable works include
The Klingon Way (with Klingon sayings and proverbs),
Klingon for the Galactic Traveler and the two audio productions
Conversational Klingon and
Power Klingon.
''The Klingon Hamlet''
Three books have also been published in the tongue:
ghIlghameS (
Gilgamesh), ''
Hamlet'' (
Hamlet), and
paghmo' tIn mIS (
Much Ado About Nothing). These last two choices were inspired by a remark from High Chancellor Gorkon in '' that
Shakespeare is best read in the original Klingon (some fans assumed it to be a joke, though another explanation subsequently surfaced that a future Klingon time traveler had translated some Klingon operas and sold them to Shakespeare).
Qapla'
Some
Trekkies take the time to learn it and at some
Star Trek conventions one can hear enthusiasts use it amongst themselves. They often greet each other with the Klingon word ''nuqneH'' (literally: "What do you want?"). This is the only greeting in Klingon. Another phrase commonly heard among Star Trek fans is ''Qapla''', the Klingon word for "success".
Paramount Pictures owns a
copyright to the official dictionary and other
canonical descriptions of the language. Some people dispute the validity of Paramount's claim of copyright on the language itself in light of the
U.S. Supreme Court's ''
Feist'' decision
[1], but no challenge has actually been brought to court.
It is commonly postulated that features of the Klingon language were taken from various real Earth languages which Okrand has studied, particularly
Native American languages. It is known however, that a design principle of the Klingon language was dissimilarity to existing natural languages.
According to
Guinness World Records for 2006, it is the most spoken fictional language by number of speakers.
Mind Performance Hacks mentions learning a constructed language for reasons related to the
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, suggesting that knowing an alternate language may provide a different method of critical thought when tackling a difficult problem; the book mentions Klingon as one such language. Other mentioned languages include
Lojban and
Solresol, as well as a passing reference to
Sindarin (Elf,
J.R.R. Tolkien).
Canon
An important concept to spoken and written Klingon is canonicity. Only words and grammatical forms introduced by Marc Okrand are considered proper, canonical Klingon.
It is a bone of contention among Klingonists as to what level of
neologism is permissible.
[2]
Sources of Canon
The following are works which are considered to be canon Klingon and are the sources of Klingon vocabulary and grammar for all other works.
[3]
;Books
:The Klingon Dictionary (TKD)
:The Klingon Way (TKW)
:Klingon for the Galactic Traveler (KGT)
:''
Sarek'', a novel which includes some tlhIngan Hol
:''Federation Travel Guide'', a pamphlet from Pocketbooks.
;Audio Tapes
:Conversational Klingon (CK)
:Power Klingon (PK)
;Other Sources
:certain articles in HolQeD (the journal of the KLI) (HQ)
:certain Skybox Trading Cards (SKY)
:a Star Trek Bird of Prey poster (BoP)
:Star Trek: Klingon, a CD-ROM game (KCD, also STK)
:On-line and in-person text/speech by Marc Okrand (mostly newsgroup postings)
The letters in parentheses following each item (if any) indicate the acronym by which the source is referred to when quoting canon.
Notable speakers
Some Klingonists have gained relative notoriety for various accomplishments. The
Klingon Language Institute can award the title ''Friend of Maltz'' to a Klingonist who has furthered the language in various ways.
Rich Yampell
Rich Yampell (known to Klingonists as Captain Krankor) is a software engineer, currently residing in Bellevue, Washington State, USA. Probably the world's first ever conversational speaker of Klingon, he has been a source of inspiration for numerous enthusiasts of Klingon, many of whom now rank themselves among experienced Klingon speakers. He is the author of the book "The Grammarian's Desk," published in 1996 by the Klingon Language Institute, a collection of the columns he wrote for the Institute's scholarly journal "HolQeD." Captain Krankor is also the author and co-author of numerous songs, such as the Klingon Anthem "taHjaj wo' " (music and lyrics), " 'Iv maH" (music and lyrics), "yIH bom" (music).
d'Armond Speers
Dr. d'Armond Speers is an American computational linguist and a member of the KLI.
He graduated from
Georgetown University in the Spring of 2002. His dissertation topic was "Representation of American Sign Language for Machine Translation."
[4]
Dr. Speers is known for having undertaken the endeavour to raise his child bilingually in
English and Klingon; Speers spoke in Klingon and his wife in
English. A few years into his life, the child began rejecting Klingon and gravitating towards English, as he could use English with many more speakers. The fact that Klingon lacked many words for things that were important in a baby's life, such as "diaper," and "pacifier," was a lesser issue. At the time of Speers' attempt, Klingon even lacked words for many objects common around the house, such as "table". The experiment ultimately failed when the child refused to use Klingon when he got older.
[5]
Lawrence M. Schoen
Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen is the founder and current director of the KLI. He is the editor of the Institute's scholarly journal "HolQeD," and co-creator of the Klingon song "yIH bom" (lyrics). With only two exceptions, he has been the organizer of the KLI's annual summer conference, or qep'a'.
He obtained a bachelor's degree in psycholinguistics from
California State University, Northridge, and then master's and doctoral degrees in psychology from
Kansas State University. He has worked as a professor, teaching and doing research, at
New College of Florida,
Lake Forest College,
Chestnut Hill College, and
West Chester University. More recently he serves as the director of research and chief compliance officer for the Wedge Medical Center.
He is also a professional science fiction author, a lifetime member of
SFWA, and in 2007 was nominated for the
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
He resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA, and maintains a post office box in Flourtown, PA, the international headquarters of the KLI.
Jyrki Kasvi
Jyrki Kasvi is a
Finnish politician and member of
Finnish Parliament, representing the
Green League. His personal website is available in Klingon as well as Finnish, English and Swedish.
Phonology
Klingon has been developed with a
phonology that, while based on human
natural languages, is intended to sound
alien. When initially developed, Paramount Pictures (owners of the Star Trek
franchise) wanted the Klingon language to be guttural and harsh and Okrand wanted it to be unusual, so he selected
sounds that combined in ways not generally found in other languages. The effect is mainly achieved by the use of a number of
retroflex and
uvular consonants in the language's inventory. Although natural languages use a number of different
airstream mechanisms besides the common
pulmonic egressive, these other mechanisms are not used in Klingon. This is perhaps because these sounds are a lot more difficult to learn to produce if one's language does not use them. Klingon has twenty-one consonants (the list below shows twenty-two - the '<D>' has two similar sounds) and five
cardinal vowels. Klingon is normally written in a variant of the
Latin alphabet (see
below). In this orthography,
upper and
lower case letters are not interchangeable (uppercase letters mostly represent sounds different to those expected by English speakers). In the discussion below, standard Klingon orthography appears in ''<angle brackets>'', and the
phonemic transcription in the
International Phonetic Alphabet is written between ''/slashes/''.
Consonants
The inventory of consonants in Klingon is spread over a number of
places of articulation. In spite of this, the inventory has many gaps: Klingon has no
velar plosives, and only one
sibilant. Deliberately, this arrangement is quite bizarre by the standards of human languages. The combination of aspirated
voiceless alveolar plosive and
voiced retroflex plosive is particularly unusual, for example. The consonants
and () can be realized as and , respectively.
Vowels
In contrast to consonants, Klingon's inventory of vowels is simple and similar to many human languages, such as Spanish. There are five vowels spaced evenly around the vowel space, with two back rounded vowels, and two front or near-front unrounded vowels — the most common for human languages. There is also a back unrounded vowel.
The two front vowels, <e> and <I>, represent sounds that are found in English but are more open and lax than a typical English speaker might assume when reading Klingon text written in the Latin alphabet, causing the consonants of a word to be more prominent. This enhances the sense that Klingon is a clipped and harsh-sounding language.
;Vowels
:<a> — — open back unrounded vowel (in English ''spa'')
:<e> — — open-mid front unrounded vowel (in English ''bed'')
:<I> — — near-close near-front unrounded vowel (in English ''bit'')
:<o> — — close-mid back rounded vowel (in French ''eau'')
:<u> — — close back rounded vowel (in Spanish ''tu'')
Diphthongs can be analyzed phonetically as the combination of the five vowels plus one of the two semivowels and (represented by <w> and <y>, respectively). Thus, the combinations <ay>, <ey>, <Iy>, <oy>, <uy>, <aw>, <ew> and <Iw> are possible. There are no words in the Klingon language that contain
★ <ow> or
★ <uw>.
Vowel stress
In verbs, the stressed syllable is usually the verb itself, as opposed to a prefix or any suffixes except when a suffix ending with ' is separated from the verb by at least one other suffix, in which case the suffix ending in ' is also stressed. In addition, stress may shift to a suffix which is meant to be emphasized.
In nouns, the final syllable of the stem (the noun itself, excluding any affixes) is stressed. If any syllables ending in ' are present, the stress shifts to those syllables.
The stress in other words seems to be variable, but this is not a serious issue because most of these words are only one syllable in length. Still, there are some words which should fall under the rules above, but do not, although using the standard rules would still be acceptable.
Syllabification
Klingon syllable structure is extremely strict: a syllable must start with a consonant (which includes the glottal stop) followed by one vowel. In prefixes and other more rare syllables, this is enough. More commonly, this consonant-vowel pair is followed by one consonant or one of three biconsonantal codas: /-'''w' '-'y' '-'rgh'''/. Thus, ''ta'' "record", ''tar'' "poison" and ''targh'' "targ" (a type of animal) are all legal syllable forms, but
★ ''tarD'' and
★ ''ar'' are not. Despite this, there is one suffix that takes the shape vowel+consonant: the endearment suffix -''oy''.
Grammar
Klingon is an agglutinative language, using mainly affixes in order to alter the function or meaning of words. Some nouns have inherently plural forms: ''jengva''' "plate" vs. ''ngop'' "plates", for instance.
Klingon nouns take suffixes to indicate grammatical number, gender, two levels of deixis, possession and syntactic function. In all, 29 noun suffixes from five classes may be employed: ''jupoypu'na'wI'vaD'' "for my beloved true friends". Speakers are limited to no more than one suffix from each class to be added to a word, and the classes have a specific order of appearance.
Gender in Klingon does not indicate sex, as in English, or have an arbitrary assignment as in Danish or many other languages. It indicates whether a noun refers to a body part, a being capable of using language, or neither of these.
Verbs in Klingon are even more complex, taking a prefix indicating the number and person of the subject and object, plus suffixes from nine ordered classes, plus a special suffix class called ''rovers''. Each of the four known rovers has its own unique rule controlling its position among the suffixes in the verb. Verbs are marked for aspect, certainty, predisposition and volition, dynamic, causative, mood, negation, and honorific, and the Klingon verb has two moods: indicative and imperative.
The most common word order in Klingon is Object Verb Subject, and in some cases the word order is the exact reverse of word order in English:
'''DaH mojaq-mey-vam DI-vuS-nIS-be' 'e' vI-Har'''
now suffix-PL-DEM 1PL.A.3PL.P-limit-need-NEG that 1SG.A.3SG.P-believe
"I believe that we do not need to limit these suffixes now."
Note that hyphens are used in the above only to illustrate the use of affixes. Hyphens are not used in Klingon.
Unlike most artificial auxiliary languages, which seek to either emulate elements of several evolved human languages in order to be easier to learn, or to be more regular with fewer exceptions than is the case in evolved existing languages, the Klingon language tries to break away from the most common features of other languages and embraces the exceptions to its own rules.
Writing systems
Main articles: Klingon writing systems
The official Klingon writing system is the Latin alphabet as used above, but on the television series, the Klingons use their own alien writing system. In ''The Klingon Dictionary'' this alphabet is named as ''pIqaD'', but no information is given about it. When Klingon symbols are used in Star Trek productions they are merely decorative graphic elements, designed to emulate real writing and create an appropriate atmosphere.
The Astra Image Corporation designed the symbols (currently used to "write" Klingon) for '', although these symbols are often incorrectly attributed to Michael Okuda.[6] They based the letters on the Klingon battlecruiser hull markings (three letters) first created by Matt Jeffries, and on Tibetan writing because the script had sharp letter forms — used as a testament to the Klingons' love for knives and blades.
Vocabulary
A design principle of the Klingon language is the great degree of lexical-cultural correlation in the vocabulary. For example, there are several words meaning "to fight" or "to clash against", each having a different degree of intensity. There is a plethora of words relating to warfare and weaponry and also a great variety of curses (cursing is considered a fine art in Klingon culture). This helps lend a particular character to the language.
There are also a very large number of "in jokes" built into the language.[7] For example, the word for "pair" is ''chang'eng'', a reference to the twins Chang and Eng, and the word for "fish" is ''ghotI'''.
Cultural references
★ In 1996, Simon & Schuster Interactive published a PC computer game called Star Trek: Klingon. The second CD of this game included a Klingon Language Lab, which used speech recognition software from Dragon Systems to teach proper pronunciation of various Klingon terms.
★ In 1999, The Onion published a satirical article claiming that the number of Klingon speakers exceeded the number of Navajo speakers.[8] This is quite false, as Navajo, the most vigorous indigenous language in the United States, is spoken by over 100,000 people, far more than the highest estimate of Klingon speakers.
★ In the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode "Seeing Red", which first aired May 7, 2002, Xander unwittingly reveals his knowledge of Klingon when he instantly determines the language used in some of The Nerds' papers.
★ The sixth episode of the tenth season of Frasier, "Star-Mitzvah", which first aired November 5, 2002, had Frasier reading a short blessing in Klingon at his son's Bar Mitzvah having been tricked into believing it was Hebrew.
★ In the Film Actors Guild shout the Klingon word ''Qapla'!'', meaning success.
★ In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Super Computer," Frylock names the computer he invented the "OoGhiJ MIQtxxXA" which he claims is Klingon for "Superior Galactic Intelligence." While the second word has no meaning in Okrand's Klingon, the first word is similar orthographically to the Klingon word ''QoghIj'' "brain".
★ Apple's Mac OS X operating system supports a number of different languages, however applications may not support the user's preferred language. So the operating system allows the user to pick the order that languages will be selected from the available options. Klingon is included in the possible selections although it is not included with the operating system itself.[9]
★ In "Weird Al" Yankovic's song "White & Nerdy", one line is "I'm fluent in JavaScript as well as Klingon".
★ In Witch Hunt, an ''NCIS'' episode, agents raid a fancy dress party where a person is dressed as a Klingon. He insults Special Agent Gibbs by saying ''Hab SoSlI' Quch!''. McGee translates this to "Your mother has a smooth forehead" and reveals he speaks Klingon, but not fluently.
★ A programming language called var'aq was inspired by Klingon.
★ Klingon is available in the Language Tools on Google, and most of the site is translated. [10]
★ In Eddie Murphy's movie Daddy Day Care (2003), one child supposedly speaks Klingon and is discovered by Marvin (Steve Zahn), who also speaks Klingon and wears an Enterprise uniform t-shirt.
★ In May 2003, the Multnomah County, Oregon Department of Human Services named Klingon on a list of 55 languages for which it might conceivably need interpreters; this story was circulated out-of-context as an urban legend claiming that the department was looking to hire a Klingon interpreter. County Chair Diane Linn called the listing the "result of an overzealous attempt to ensure that our safety net systems can respond to all customers and clients."[11]
★ In Passion of the Jew, an episode of South Park which first aired March 31, 2004, when Mel Gibson goes on his rampage, he also shouts ''Qapla'!''
★ In the 2004 ''The Simpsons'' episode 330 (15.17), ''My Big Fat Geek Wedding'', an altar can be seen on a SciFi convention, bearing the engraved letters 'love' from the Klingon pIqaD alphabet. However, this is not an actual word in Klingon.
★ In 2004 ''E.R.'' Episode 220 (10.19), ''Just a Touch'', which first aired April 22, 2004, Abby must deal with half a dozen psychiatric patients, and one of them speaks only Klingon.
★ In 2005 a documentary film called '' was released. The film shows members of the Klingon Language Institute talking about their hobby of speaking Klingon. Short interviews with Michael Dorn are interspersed with interviews with Institute members.
★ Big Brother (UK series 7) in 2006 featured a "geek task" where housemates had to learn some Klingon phrases and then carry on a simple conversation with Big Brother in Klingon.
★ The character The Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons claims to have translated The Lord of the Rings into Klingon as part of his thesis.
★ In 2002 Farscape Episode 10401 (4.1), ''Crichton Kicks,'' John Crichton shouts a Klingon offense at a group of invaders before stating to Sikozu, "You didn't get that? Yeah, 'cause it's Klingon!"
★ Drew Hayden Taylor's 2002 play ''The Buz'gem Blues'' features a First Nations activist character who also has a hidden background as a Trekkie. In one scene he talks about working on a Klingon-Cree dictionary as a teenager.
See also
★ Alien language
★ Klingonaase, an earlier, non-canonical Klingon language put forth by author John M. Ford.
★ Stovokor, a heavy metal band who sing exclusively in Klingon
★ , 's page on the Klingon language
References
1. Klingon is Copyrighted Ernest Miller
2. [www.angelfire.com/trek/yensw/PDF/thesis.pdf Klingon as Linguistic Capital, Yens Wahlgren, June 2000]
3. KLI Wiki, ''Canon sources''
4. d'Armond Speers homepage
5. Gavin Edwards: ''Babble On Revisited'', Wired Magazine, Issue 7.08, August 1999
6. Symbols attributed to Okuda: the Klingon Language Institute's ''Klingon FAQ'' (edited by d'Armond Speers), question 2.13 by Will Martin (August 18 1994). Symbols ''incorrectly'' attributed to Okuda: KLI founder Lawrence M. Schoen's "On Orthography" (PDF), citing J. Lee's "An Interview with Michael Okuda" in the KLI's journal ''HolQed'' 1.1 (March 1992), p. 11. Symbols actually designed by Astra Image Corporation: Michael Everson's Proposal....[3].
7. Puns in the Vocabulary of tlhIngan Hol
8. Klingon Speakers Now Outnumber Navajo Speakers
9. Mac OS X Supports Klingon Derek Gulbranson
10. Google in Klingon
11. Klingon Interpreter
External links
★ Klingon Language Institute
★ Klingon and its User: A Sociolinguistic Profile — Sociolinguistics — M.A. Thesis
★ Klingon as Linguistic Capital: A Sociologic Study of Nineteen Advanced Klingonists (PDF) (HTML version) — Sociology — Bachelor's Thesis; includes lists of canonical words and neologisms or slang
★ Klingonska Akademien
★ Is Klingon an Ohlonean language? A comparison of Mutsun and Klingon
★ Omniglot: Klingon Alphabet
★ Deutsche-Welle's Klingon Language Service
★ BBC article on Deutsche-Welle's Klingon Language Service
★ information on the Skybox Trading cards, with Klingon writing
★ : an encyclopaedia in Klingon language
★
★ Google in Klingon
★ Klingon Rock
★ Deutsche Welle Germany's International broadcaster goes Klingon
★ Klingon Custom Culture for Windows Vista
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