tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jul 17 09:33:23 2008

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Re: Atlantean language

Fiat Knox ([email protected]) 

--- Doq <[email protected]> wrote:

> The simple truth is, Okrand has the expertise, the time
> and the  
> dedication to come up with these languages, and you
> don't. His work is  
> recognized by enough people to form groups based upon his
> languages  
> and his authority to create and modify them. Your work is
> not.

Son, I was reading and speaking languages other than
English before TKD came into print. I got a copy of the
original Blue Book when the first imports arrived here in
the UK in the Eighties, and before that, I amused myself
with the pamphlet-sized Vulcan Dictionary I bought at a
Trek con years before then.

Before that, it amused me for many years to learn
Esperanto, Latin, Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese, Swahili and
a bunch of other languages, conlangs and natural. This
youthful indulgence has proven immeasurably useful to me in
the present.

When Pocket Books began promoting the early White Book TKD
in the UK in 1992, before the KLI came into being, they
cast about among British Trekkers, looking for the one they
considered "the Klingon language expert." Everyone pointed
to me.

I taught tlhIngan Hol at a Star Trek convention on 6 May
1991 in Birmingham, at an event scheduled on the events
timetable. I also watched that flame flicker and die, some
time later, at meetings of Star Trek fans across the
country, when tlhIngan Hol - like Star Trek - became
yesterday's fashion, lost among the run of TV shows like
Heroes, BSG, Supernatural and Smallville.

But every single potential Klingonist who comes to me
asking about the language gets nothing but respect,
encouragement and help. I suspect I have even got more than
a few "newbies," to use your ill-used pejorative, to apply
what they were learning about languages to other,
Terrestrial, tongues. I think Marc Okrand would approve,
though this is more to do with my desire to weaken the
spectre of bigotry and encourage tolerance among the local
Anglophones for others than in seeking approval from MO or,
indeed, anyone.

Oh. And Marc Okrand's not the only linguist in the world,
nor even the best. You don't even need to be a linguist to
invent a language that endures.

More than a century ago, a Polish oculist - note, not a
professional linguist, but a mere grinder of ophthalmic
lenses for spectacles - invented a full conlang, Esperanto,
which survives to this day. And it survives, because it's
spoken by millions of people worldwide, who maintain the
language, its words and grammar as gardeners and farmers
maintain their allotments and smallholdings.

It survives, because no one person holds the keys to the
language; every Esperantist knows that they bear a legacy
in that language, and a practical duty to encourage the
growth of Esperanto wherever they live, rather than hoard
the secrets of its grammar, syntax and vocabulary to
itself.

> You can't just step in and take over because, by your
> reckoning,  
> Okrand isn't doing it the way you think he should, so by
> self- 
> declaration, you can take over.

I'm not trying to take over anything. I believe I was
merely stepping in to stop you steamrollering yet another
newbie and his dreams of a living Atlantean.

Incidentally, as for Uremehir, I freelance for White Wolf,
the gaming company behind that game which introduced the
concept of that conlang. Personally, I'd love the
opportunity to develop and support it for them. So far,
nobody's dared come near it as yet. White Wolf simply never
have the time.

> I'm not convinced that the language will die without
> his dedicated expansion of it at a pace that satisfies 
> some newbie who wants to take over. That prediction has 
> been made for over a decade. It hasn't happened yet.

It'll go when nobody bothers to want to learn it any more,
and the last Klingon speakers pass having failed to
encourage others to want to take up learning it.

More than ever, 22 or more years since the Blue Book
emerged on the book market, it is incumbent upon
Klingonists to encourage newcomers to learn, to err and to
gain confidence in best practice in tlhIngan Hol. And to
communicate more, rather than to condemn out of hand. "That
which we learn to do, we learn by doing."


Peace,


Alex.

"Oh, I love it when they /ask/ me to corrupt them ..." - Me, talking to Nai, Mar 01 2008

"You people and your quaint little categories." - Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood

"We're grown ups now, and it's our turn to decide what that means." - Randall Munroe, http://xkcd.com

Conquer the Universe with me! See how at http://fiat-knox.livejournal.com

We are now leaving the Kingdom of Star Trek and entering normal space.


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