tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jan 13 13:09:31 2007

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Re: Why Do You Study Klingon?

Terrence Donnelly ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

Several people have said they study Klingon because
they enjoy it, which is also my reason, but I'd like
to go into it a little deeper.

My real enjoyment of Klingon is linguistic.  I've
always liked Star Trek, but it wasn't my main reason
for studying Klingon, and I don't really like Klingon
culture all that much (too unreflective and self-
defeating).

I enjoy learning how different language structures
are used to express thoughts.  I enjoy using different
languages; I just
get a sense of accomplishment and feeling of
strangeness that I find oddly pleasant.  I also
find that I like the languages that are as
different from English as possible (which is why I
just can't get interested in the Germanic or
Romance languages).

Klingon appealed to me because it looked easy (natural
languages can have a real steep learning curve),
was pleasantly strange, and had a fairly large pool
of users, thanks to the popularity of Star Trek.
And Klingon has lived up to my hopes. I get a real
charge out of reading extended text in Klingon, or
writing something and having someone 
else read it and understand it.  I do find Klingon's
limited vocabulary and restrictive grammar to be
frustrating sometimes, but since I don't expect
Klingon to be a total means of communication,
I just live with it. 

Klingon is just a hobby, something I do for fun. I
don't expect it to have any more significance than
that.

-- ter'eS

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