tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Oct 21 08:17:38 1998
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Re: RE: More words
While I respect your good intent with this, I honestly believe
that you are approaching this from a position of ignorance of
much of the reality surrounding the Klingon language, Okrand's
position toward it and our relationship to it. I also doubt your
fundamental assumptions, though I perhaps understand why you
make them.
On Wed, 21 Oct 1998 06:12:43 -0700 (PDT) "Rose, Thornton
(Atlanta)" <[email protected]> wrote:
> By "more extensive set" I mean more new words. I think more
> people would take an interest in Klingon if there were more
> words for the things that they would want to say, and the Star
> Trek writers might just do a better job, too.
The Star Trek writers have never shown any interest in
understanding the language. For the movies, the writers wrote
English sentences which became subtitles and sent them to Okrand
to translate. He then coached the actors on how to say the words
he came up with.
For the TV shows, usually, the writers just make stuff up.
Sometimes, they appear to have actually looked at the word list
in the back of the dictionary, but they have certainly never
even scanned the sections on grammar. The TV shows are produced
in a different way than the movies and no one there ever
communicates with Okrand. Giving the Star Trek writers a larger
vocabulary would not prompt them to do a better job. They would
just have more words to mangle in English sentence structure
stuffed full of mispronounced Klingon words.
I also VERY much doubt that having a larger vocabulary would
increase interest in the language. Face it. By the time you've
figured out whether or not Klingon has all the words you want,
you are already hooked. Either that, or you gave up before you
got that far.
French doesn't have all the words in it that people wanted to
use. That's why they have "le weekend". Do you think that there
needs to be a committee of people who are not French to get
together and decide what new words the French vocabulary needs?
Okrand gives us new words. He doesn't do so at an amazing pace,
but he does do so. To be honest, it is a shock to the Klingon
speaking community when we get a bundle of new words because
having a few hundred new words to memorize isn't that simple
when we don't have daily conversations with friends using the
language in our everyday lives.
> You say that there is not a "language committee", but I think
> it's actually a great idea. The KLI could be the sponsor, and
> Dr. Okrand could be the chair, with final say on additions and
> changes to tlhIngan Hol, of course. I know tlhIngan Hol is his
> intellectual property, but I would think that he would like to
> see it grow (but he might not, either). Has anyone ever talked
> to him about it? Has he ever said either about further
> development of tlhIngan Hol?
There are a couple ideas I'd like to introduce you to:
1. Okrand is brilliant. If he wasn't, he could not have come up
with a language as interesting as this, especially under the
time pressure he had as the third Star Trek movie was being
produced. While the vocabulary has been expanded quite a bit,
I'm repeatedly impressed with how much of the vocabulary was
created in that initial burst. We now have, by my rough count,
excluding names and derivative words (I count {ghoj} but I don't
count {ghojmoH}) just under 2,200 words. Of those about 1,500
were from the original word list and the number hits around
1,800 when you add the Addendum. That was before he got any
feedback about the vocabulary, and before the other books and
tapes he's published. He did a very good job of creating a basic
vocabulary useful for general speech with added words for the
Star Trek fictional universe.
2. Okrand is busy. The few of us who commonly have access to him
(and I don't count myself in that group) don't get to
communicate with him very often. I've personally met him three
times (once at StellarCon and twice at qep'a'mey), talked to him
on the phone once (also at a qep'a') and I've gotten two Emails
from him (as part of a group he was invited to participate in,
but never he never took to it), and I think he answered one
NEWS group message I left on MSN. That has occurred over the
past six years, and I can tell you, that's more contact than
most people have had in the KLI, and if we are lucky, it will
stay that way.
He guards his private life. Just because he created a language
we like a lot doesn't mean we get to jerk him around and
schedule him for monthly meetings so we can tell him what we
want him to do with his language and he can then do our bidding.
3. Okrand makes money from his publications. His publishers
don't want him telling people about works he is currently
developing. Part of his publication contract is a non-disclosure
agreement. This is business in the real world. We never know if
he is working on a book or tape until very near release. He also
has a delightfully twisted sense of humor and darkly enjoys
failing to answer direct questions. He should be a diplomat, or
at least a politician. By those who have met him, he is famous
for his mischevious smiles while he gives answers like, "That's
a very interesting question..." and then never actually answers
it.
Meanwhile, Okrand does, in time, actually respond to things. I
wrote a short story (actually the first chapter of an
unpublished novel) and translated it into Klingon. I sent it to
Okrand via his publisher and never got a response back. It was
about a tree falling. I had a really hard time with the
vocabulary since there really weren't very many "tree" related
words. I struggled to come up with terms for the trunk ("body"),
the limbs ("arms"), the branches ("fingers") and the leaves. I
referred to the wood as the tree's substance and the leaves were
"little flags". That was certainly the weakest term I came up
with.
Years later, in KGT, we have a word for "leaf", and not a lot of
reasons to have it. Also, the word for "wood" is {Sor Hap). I
have a strong sense that Okrand is telling me that he actually
read the short story, but he is doing so in a way that cannot be
confirmed. The short story was later published (with the new
word for "leaf") in jatmey, a copublication with HolQeD.
Then again, if he actually confirmed it, he might get swamped
with people sending him stuff they write in Klingon. He protects
himself by refusing to reward that which he does not want in
excess. His experience so far has apparently been that a small
remark casually mentioned in one context can have large
repercussions later, so he doesn't make many casual remarks
about the language.
4. Creativity is meaningless without limits against which one
struggles. If an environment is too restrictive, creativity is
crushed. If an environment is not restrictive enough, creativity
wanders aimlessly. Rodin did amazing things with stone. If stone
had been easier to work with, his statues would be a lot less
impressive. People who complain that stone is too difficult to
work with should not complain about it to sculptors.
The Klingon language does have a restrictive vocabulary, yet for
an artificial language created in the time span it was and in
the environment it was, it is nothing short of amazing. The
expressive capabilities of the language can't be appreciated by
anyone who has not learned it, and I hear a LOT more complaints
about its restrictions by those who can't speak it than I do by
those who do.
So far as I can tell, people who want it to be easy to encode
any English sentence into a Klingon packet want Klingon to, like
English, have a huge vocabulary. People who want to be able to
express things using the language and who actually DO express
things with the language complain about this far less often.
I say this while I, myself, have pet words I'd like to add to
the vocabulary. {'arlogh and wejvI'} come to mind... But I
don't. The language belongs to Okrand. Deal with it.
Or don't deal with it. Just don't expect a lot of support for an
idea that is not new and will not be implemented.
> ~ Thornton
charghwI' 'utlh