tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jan 24 00:04:03 2006

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Re: Ubykh via Klingon?

QeS 'utlh ([email protected])



jIghItlhpu', jIja':
>I learn the Ubykh language, which has many sounds in common with Klingon,
>and I have found that since I started speaking Klingon, my Ubykh
>pronunciation has got noticeably better because I am more used to making
>those sounds foreign to English.

mujang Voragh, ja':
>Did you tell your Ubykh teacher your secret?  What was the reaction?

ghojmoHwI'? ghojmoHwI'wI' jIH'e'. Heghpu' Holvetlh. {{:)

It's mainly the Klingon retroflex {S} that has helped, although the Klingon 
{Q} is also a very common allophone of the Ubykh phoneme /q/.

>Esperantists tout the virtue of using Esperanto as a relatively simple 
>"bridge language" for people before learning their first foreign natural 
>language.  Similarly, many beginners have commented that learning Klingon 
>(and reading Mailing List) helped them immensely in understanding basic 
>grammatical principals and got them over that "Why doesn't [language] work 
>like English?" barrier that afflicts so many novice learners.  I don't 
>remember if any of them ever told their teachers about the value of 
>learning Klingon first.
>This gives yet another meaning to the KLI slogan {qo'mey poSmoH Hol} 
>"Language opens worlds". <g>

Indeed. I've often thought that Klingon's a priori nature makes it about as 
close as we'll ever get to a workable true IAL; the fact that no language 
has all of the phonemes found in Klingon, as well as the large number of 
points of articulation found in Klingon phonemes, mean that it's a good 
exercise in phonetics; and its small lexicon means both that it's relatively 
easy to acquire a competitive working vocabulary, and that it makes you 
think more about how you're going to say what you're going to say. I reckon 
that these reasons are part of why Klingon tends to draw linguistically 
inclined people rather than Star Trek fans.

Once you've had Klingon, you'll never go back. {{:)

QeS 'utlh
tlhIngan Hol yejHaD pabpo' / Grammarian of the Klingon Language Institute


not nItoj Hemey ngo' juppu' ngo' je
(Old roads and old friends will never deceive you)
     - Ubykh Hol vIttlhegh

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