tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 11 06:04:01 1994

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Re: chay' tlhIngan Hol boghojta' tlhIH

According to Niall Hosking:
> 
> 
> I'd be interested to know how the 'great knowledgeable ones' became so
> expert.
> -- 
> {qSeroHS vayn}

Being fairly confident that I am among the second tier
Klingonists (first tier being Krankor and ~mark, who are
conversant and actually talk in real time with no dictionary),
I consider myself to be one of the ALMOST great knowledgeable
ones. My method?

Well, I read TKD a few times, listened to the audio tapes (CK,
PK) a few times, bought videos of the movies (and need to see
them a few MORE times), subscribed to HolQeD, and all that
built up enough of a foundation for me to begin my REAL
education HERE.

Krankor made a vow to post only in Klingon for a month, and my
skill reached a new plateau. Basically, a lot of people here
post things in Klingon that is obtuse enough that I'd get
confused while trying to read it and much of the time, I'd just
give up. Krankor writes in a style that is so accessible to
anyone who learns the basic rules, that seeing substantial
quantities of Klingon text written by him gave me the practice
I needed to recognize grammatical constructions and build a
fundamental vocabulary.

My weakness is still vocabulary. That's why I'm not first tier.
It is certainly the next thing for me to fix. I still have to
lean heavily on the dictionary most of the time I'm
translating, though now, I'm only looking up maybe half the
words when before I had to look up all the words.

That's reading. As for writing, I just wrote, got corrected,
assimilated the feedback, argued about things until the
concepts finally drilled their way through my authentically
thick skull (I was slow and stupid when it came to adjectival
verbs...) and then, after writing enough simple stuff, I
started seeing ways to express relatively complex thoughts
through relatively simple grammatical constructions.

That took time, and it wasn't really something I consciously
developed through any strategy. It just sort of happened. It's
the one thing I seem to do better than most with still
increasing frequency as my vocabulary grows and my familiarity
with the options available to me increases. This list is
largely responsible for both of these areas of improvement.

I do still recommend to everyone that they get a couple copies
of TKD (because just one will wear out quickly), get both audio
tapes, and DEFINITELY subscribe to HolQeD, since it is the
place new word from Okrand happens and it is the place that
has Krankor's FROM THE GRAMMARIAN'S DESK, which is always
illuminating, and occasional contributions from other talented
Klingonists that you don't always hear from on this list.

Even when you DO hear from us in HolQeD, we tend to be on our
best behavior. *I*, on the other hand, am not all that well
represented there, since most of my posts have received
appropriately scathing comments afterward...

Ahhh well. I had to learn, too, you know.

charghwI'

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