mach qach tIn Duj
It felt like forever getting past the titular phrases on my Klingon Duolingo course. If I ever write a book about this topic, I will name it like that. But this is not to complain about Duolingo. It is to express my appreciation for the Klingon course and the (klingonist) people behind it. Here is why.
At first, I’d like to thank all the people involved, setting up the course and still supporting it! One can really feel all the effort put into it, especially before Duo skipped all the precious grammar and learning tips.
Of course, I’m aware of the flaws of the Duolingo setup. Will you learn a language solely relying on Doulingo? Probably not. Will you learn Klingon? Probably yes (with some restrictions).
It won’t make much sense learning all aspects of “apple” in French via Duo (seems to be an emphasis), when, while in France, you talk about daily business and not apples. But thing is, I won’t go to Qo’noS very soon. Or meet a Klingon before 2151 either. At home, I started yelling at my cats in Klingon, when they don’t behave – I can’t really be mad at them, so this way it sounds fiercer – unfortunately, they don’t answer (or care about anyway). But the course talks to me. In Klingon. With proper pronunciation. And I repeat/reply.
So, Duo makes me talk in Klingon and it is awesome! Even better, I’m talking about KLINGON topics and culture; “The knife was absent in the morning” really made me laugh. And I would not know anything about the denebian slime devil.
Also, the constant repetition hammers the essential object-verb-subject order in your brain. After completing the now so-called “Section 1”, I finally started “feeling” it in my head, whilst reading or translating.
Last but not least, some people learn Klingon because they are curious about language. I’m learning Klingon because I’m a Star Trek fan ever since. Still own my TKD (german) I bought in the 90s when I was a teen. To me, all the Trek references in the course are so much fun: Every time I read about Mara, I see Kang and Kirk laughing at the alien entity; poor Torg, who didn’t understand an English self-destruction sequence; McCoy and Spock setting up a torpedo to “find” the cloaked Bird-of-prey (jagh jan SambeH peng). Every lesson is a revival of fond memories.
So, long story short, “muS muSwI’pu’” but I won’t.
PS: According to the mentioned restrictions, the current Version of Duolingo (04/2024) doesn’t provide ANY information on grammar; this can be very confusing (e.g. in terms of Aspect suffixes, etc.). For Grammar Duo is just a start; to progress, I’m using all the available resources, like: TKD, KLI, klingonWiki, Hol ‘ampaS and so on…
PPS: since I’m Austrian while using the course, my English gets better on the fly.
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