Hello and welcome to Duolingo's course in Klingon!

We would like to tell you "Hello and welcome" in Klingon, but Klingon does not have equivalents to those words. Klingons tend to be very direct and rarely engage in conversation simply for the pleasure of conversing, making superfluous many of the pleasantries we are accustomed to using in English.

In this unit we will focus on getting you using Klingon right away.

Alphabet

The Klingon alphabet is:
a b ch D e gh H I j l m n ng o p q Q r S t tlh u v w y '

Note that case matters: many letters are always lowercase (even at the beginning of a sentence) and some are always uppercase (even in the middle of a word).

Pronunciation:

Letters b l m n p t and v are said as in English, but b, p and t should always have a puff of air, even at the end of a word.

Vowels each have one pronunciation.
a as in father
e as in ten
I as in it
o as in bowl
u as the oo in pool

I is uppercase to remind us that it is different from the pattern of 5 vowels we often see in foreign languages.

H is said at the top of the throat with a raspy vibration in the back of the mouth, but without any voiced hum in the throat or nasals. It is similar to the "ch" heard in Scottish "loch", Hebrew "l'chaim", and German "Bach", though it is usually said a little further back and a little stronger than those sounds. It is capitalized to remind us not to say it like the weak English "h". When you see a lower-case "h" it will always be part of one of the consonants ch, gh, or tlh.

D in Klingon sounds similar to the English "d", but said with the tip of the tongue further back in the high roof of the mouth and is capitalized to help us remember the difference.

nuqneH

nuqneH is a truncated form of nuq DaneH, meaning "What do you want?"

It is a common misconception that this is "the Klingon word for hello". In fact, Klingons have no word for hello. If a Klingon wishes to say something, they'll walk up to you and say it, without wasting time – as they see it – on idle chatter.

This phrase is a special exclamation and not a grammatically formed question.

Qapla'

Klingon for "success".

This word is often mistranslated as "Goodbye", due to the fact that it is often heard at the end of conversations. In fact, Klingon has no word for "Goodbye", but Qapla' is often used either to congratulate somebody on their success or to wish them success in the future.

Verbs

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.

If the subject is third person (he/she/it/they) and has either no object or a third-person object (him/her/it/them), then the verb has no prefix. (With the exception of "they – him/her/it", which you will learn later). So a verb such as yaj can mean "he understands; she understands; it understands; they understand; he understands him/her/it/them; she understands him/her/it/them; or they understand them".

Because of the verbal prefixes, the subject and/or object does not have to be included as a pronoun, and subject or object pronouns are typically left off.

Joining nouns with and without "and"

Nouns are joined with je, which comes after the nouns, as in torgh mara je "Torg and Mara", or Hol pong je "the language and the name".

If there is no je after nouns next to each other, the effect is similar to possession: mara pong "Mara's name"; tlhIngan Hol "a Klingon's language, the Klingon language".

Word order

Klingon word order in a sentence may seem like the opposite of English word order – first comes the object (if any), then the verb, then the subject. So a sentence such as mara legh torgh means "Torg sees Mara".

Computer translations

You may be tempted to use computer translators, like Bing. Just don't! The quality of Klingon machine translation is almost always very bad. Don't report sentences from there.