tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jul 06 08:39:19 1993

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Re: House languages



> - Imaginary languages like Quenya and Klingon, invented by somebody to
>   lend verisimitude to a (usually alien) culture and people.

Actually, Tolkien created cultures and peoples to lend verisimiltude
to his languages.

> - Quenya.  Certainly sufficiently "foreign".  The major problem is
>   that it's no less complex linguistically than other (?) natural
>   languages.  It'd be hard to learn -- I can't imagine getting to the
>   point where I could converse with my 10 year old in it.
> 
> - Klingon.  To some extent, the same problems as with Quenya.  The
>   difference is that, mind-boggling though it might seem, there is
>   actually a Klingon Language Camp.  It also has a non-latin script
>   and a standard latin transcription (Okrand's, from his Klingon
>   Dictionary).  The major problems are that the existing vocabularly
>   is pretty tiny, and that it was *designed* to be a very harsh
>   sounding language.  I'm not sure that I want to draw *that* much
>   attention when speaking it.
> 
The main difference I see between Quenya and Klingon is that there is
a mass of diachronic phonological development that has to be dealt
with, whereas Klingon is agglutinative with (so far as I know) no
phonological interaction across morpheme boundaries. It is much
easier to construct a Klingon word that it is to construct a 
Quenya word.
 
Carl F. Hostetter
[email protected]



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