Q & q are two separate letters. ch gh ng & tlh count as single consonants in Klingon. The ' (apostrophe) also counts as a letter.

ch is said as in "church". Never like an English "k" or "sh", & never like a German, Scottish, or Hebrew "ch". Please note that ch is a single Klingon consonant.

j should be said hard like the beginning & end of the English word "judge". Never with the softer sound from French.

w & y are as in English at the beginnings of syllables. At the ends they form a combined sound called a diphthong. At the end of a syllable w sounds like "oo" & y sounds like "ee". So paw sounds like "pow" & pay sounds like "pie".

ng is said exactly as in English, but English speakers are not used to it at the beginning of a word. Put the rear of your tongue to the roof of your mouth to make this sound. Please note that ng is a single Klingon consonant.

Q combines the q sound & the H sound. It should start with the throat closed like you are going to make a q, but then explode into a raspy H-type sound.

' marks a sound we do make in English. We don't usually mark it in English. In Klingon it is a full letter & leaving it out is like missing any other letter from a word. We call this qaghwI'. It is made by closing the throat & is called a glottal stop. It's the stop between syllables in the word "uh-oh". You may notice that you also close the throat at the beginning of "uh-oh" and all English words that start with a vowel. Klingon 'ej sounds exactly like English "edge".

Apostrophes and quotes

As noted above, Klingon uses the apostrophe ' as a letter.

It does not use the double-quote character " as a letter — when you see what might look like a double-quote in the middle of the word, it is actually two apostrophes side by side.

For example, maw' means "to be crazy" or "he/she is crazy"; when you add the question suffix -'a', you get maw''a'? "is he/she crazy?".

Verbs

Klingon verbs do not have tense (past, present, future), so a verb such as yaj could mean "understands, understood, will understand".

They do have aspect (e.g. whether an action is completed or is continuous), but that will come later in the course. For now, translate verbs as non-continuous forms (e.g. "he walks" or "he walked" – not "he is walking" or "he was walking") until the continuous aspect is introduced.

In grammar, a subject is the one doing the action and an object is the one the action is done to. Klingon verbs show the subject and the object of verbs by means of prefixes.

Meaning is added to Klingon words through use of syllables added to the front or ends of words. Syllables added to the beginnings of words are called prefixes and in Klingon indicate who is doing a particular verb and who that action is done to.

The most important verb prefixes at the beginning of the course are:

• jI- = I (subject), no object
• bI- = you (subject), no object — for one person

Time Stamps

Since Klingon verbs lack tense, a common way to indicate the tense of a sentence is to note the time frame of the action at the start of the sentence. These are often called "Time Stamps". We use them in English, too:
Tomorrow I will fight the enemy.

"Tomorrow" is a time stamp. In Klingon the word for "tomorrow" is wa'leS:
wa'leS jagh vISuv.

In English, time stamps can be moved around in the sentence and it is also possible to say, "I will fight the enemy tomorrow." This is NOT true in Klingon. In Klingon the Time Stamp must be part of the beginning of the sentence and must be before the object, if there is one (which also means before the verb, whether there is an object or not). As you learn more about Klingon grammar, you will see that there are also other elements that will be part of the beginning of the sentence before the object.