tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Oct 14 08:08:04 1993
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Re: How To Learn?
On Wed, 13 Oct 1993 18:20:59 -0400, Paul J. Clegg wrote:
>
>I think my original post got lost, so here's a recap:
>
>I own the Conversational Klingon cassette, and the book (with the extra
>TNG and ST6 material), but I've really no idea how to go about actually
>learning it.
>
>I recognize that HOW you learn something is almost as important as WHAT
>you learn; I'd really like to learn Klingon, but I'm not sure how to go
>about it. The book is basically a grammar reference, but you don't
>learn (insert native language here) by constructing sentences from the
>start (or do you?).
>
>I would probably be inclined to try a "word of the day" method of learning,
>but all the prefixes and suffixes for both verbs and nouns make even that
>strenuous. How did everyone else learn Klingon? Is the best method
>brute-force memorization?
>
>...Paul
Paul,
I have been trying to learn tlhIngan Hol since July and have had many of
the same questions you have. I still don't have a good answer, but I will
say that it just takes practice and perserverence.
I have concentrated on learning the affixes and being able to split a word
along the morpheme boundarys, thus being albe to find the base word in the
dictionary. After that I have gone through and found the common household
nouns and some verbs and have been trying to learn them. I also have
written a parser which I find very helpful in learning. With this I
compiled a list of the common words used on this mailing list, which I
think would be a good place to start.
I also got several sugestions back when I asked the question about how to
learn. I am including some of them below. One I could not find the
orginal post deal with using tlhIngan Hol to talk to yourself, in lieu of
talking to someone else (which I don't have available), about things around
you, or what you are planing to do.
>From Laibow:
Matthew, I think we were in the same boat for a while; perhaps we still are. I
am not by any stretch of the imagination fluent in >Suvwi' Hol< (though I do
know several other languages, which may have made life easier), largely because
my vocabulary is minuscule, but this list, TKD, and A. Appleyard's parser
(thanks AA!) have brought me to my current level. I too was initially extremely
frustrated when I first subscribed to this list: TKD (>tlhHmgh (tlhingan Hol
mu'ghom)< ?) and the tape seemed no help whatsoever, and I was just staring at
the written Klingon going by on this list in blank panic. Once I got the
parser, however, things started taking off a bit, partly because it took the
dirty work out of finding morpheme boundaries. The important thing is to
persevere -- once you translate a message or two, you'll find it's not anywhere
near as hard as it looks (especially with punctuation!) and your morale (if
your mind works anything like mine) will improve immensely, enough to carry you
through more learning -- at least this is what happened with me. I can now
write decent Klingon (>'e' vitul!<) and am groping toward the spoken language,
so something seems to have worked somewhere. >biDo' 'e' vitul.<
To learn Hol, I recommend:
1) Join the Klingon Language Institute, which leads to:
2) Enroll in Dave Barron`s 11-lesson Klingon Postal Course
3) Obtain and peruse the audiobook _Conversational Klingon_
4) After a few lessons of Dave`s course, request from KLI (at a small cost
for copying and postage) the 18-lesson MIT course outline which is
filed in the KLI Archives.
5) Continue practicing translations, work thru each section of TKD to get
a strong feel for each point Okrand makes.
6) Make vocabulary cards for common objects and past`em on. Worked wonders
with me for German, too. Never will forget Bleistiftspitzer (pencil
sharpener). Hmm, wonder what that`d be in Hol?
DavID.
>From David B. Teague:
Matt:
You write the tlhIngan-Hol regarding how one becomes fluent in
thlIngan, and express the desire for notes for courses in
thlIngan.
I am also essentially monolingual, unless you count programming
langauges such as C++ or Pascal, and am a 'mute reader' of the
mailing list. I have the good fortune to have Holtej (d'Armond
Speers) for a step-son and friend, but at the distance, this
doesn't help much.
--Qel DavID
I hope these help some. I think the single most helpful thing I did was to
start writing something every night in tlhIngan Hol. Even if it is simply
one sentence. Then when you have a bit done, post it here to the list and
let the grammerians rip it to shreds. As long as you don't let thier
correction/comments get you down you can learn a lot about the language.
biQapbej 'e' vIQub
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| | Matt Whiteacre
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