tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 20 11:23:43 1998
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Re: More words
: > I know that this is a little off topic, and probably will rub some
: > people the wrong way (how's that for a colloquialism?), but has
: > anyone thought about or worked on creating a much more extensive
: > set of words for tlhIngan Hol?
: >
: > ~ Thornton
:
: Basically, Okrand created the language and the vocabulary. If we
: started just making up new words, what happens if he publishes a
: new book with a new word list using our same words with
: different meanings, or different words with our meanings? What
: happens if we make up words he intentionally didn't put into the
: vocabulary, like a question word meaning "which" or an explicit
: verb meaning "to be"?
And just how would we propagate these new words to everyone? We tend to
forget
that the KLI is not the sole user of Klingon. Those of us on this mailing
list
or the Paramount-owned ST:Continuum newsgroups are only a tiny fragment of the
fans around the world that play with the language. Relatively few are rich
enough to afford computers or email, or even lucky enough to live in a city
(or
country) with easy, cheap Internet access at all.
: It just gets to be a mess. Okrand owns the vocabulary. We work
: to reassemble it, since it is so fragmented among its many
: sources, but we don't make up new words.
Actually, Paramount and Simon & Schuster own the vocabulary, or claim to. In
other words, it's their toy and we're lucky they let us play with it. ;-)
If you want a reason more consistant within the Trek "universe", think of the
Klingon Language Institute as a Federation academic body that studies Klingon
languages, primarily tlhIngan Hol. Like any research organization we don't -
or at least we're not supposed to - affect or influence the object of our
study. We're observers only, perhaps with the practical goal of learning to
teach better Klingon to other Federation citizens more efficiently. But it's
up to the "Klingons" themselves to reveal more words and grammar, as first
recorded by chief Federation linguist Marc Okrand and his long time native
informant, Maltz.
Besides, making do with what we have is part of the fun.
: charghwI' 'utlh
_________________________________________________________________________
Voragh "Grammatici certant et adhuc sub judice
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons lis est." Horace (Ars Poetica)