tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Nov 30 14:14:03 1994
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pIn tIn
Glen Proechel, the revolutionary, has recently released the second edition of
his periodical. If I may (I don't want to get into copyright flames, so
hopefully I'm not breaking any laws or codes of morale by this), I want to
summarize Proechel's little publication this quarter.
His language courses are going strong, and he's even found sponsorship from
an educational agency in St Paul. This guy really knows how to run things. He
describes his plans for the future, as he comes out with Book II and III of
his course, and even talks of making a final Klingon study guide, after which
someone would supposedly be an expert.
I have no opposition to any of this, except on these grounds: Glen writes all
the teaching materials and he's not quite as skilled in the language as he
would like to think. Also, he's very liberal in his usage and ideas. He is no
conformist, and thus twists some grammatical concepts slightly when he
conveys them to his students thru his books. This is done mostly in
oversimplifications. I am planning a major review of Glen's materials, if he
accepts my editorship, and hopefully we can have a more conformist second
edition. Those are all my views, and no doubt they may be challenged, as I
sometimes become almost hostile in my criticism of Glen. I should give him
more credit than my usual facetious postings would give. He is very skilled
as a Klingonists, just needs some straightening out. I think he will listen
to reasonable constructive criticism.
Glen basically wrote the whole periodical, with only a few exceptions. He
wrote his own version of the Hamlet speech I translated for Entertainment
Weekly. His is better and worse in different places than mine. His style is a
bit more blah; he plays the metaphors way down, making it less colorful,
imesho.
Big plus to Schoen: He endorses the KLI publication of Khamlet, and
advertises the deal of one $500 contribution to the KLI for a leather-bound
Khamlet.
He writes a letter addressed to Okrand, which appears to really be a
disguised request for some new words. He said things to the effect that on
his trip to Kronos he heard Klingons say things and asks if heard them right,
e.g., "I thought I heard QoQwI' for musician. Is this correct?" more or less.
The words he's asking for were {yaq} for "delicious", {QoQghom'a'} for
"orchestra", and {rurwI'pa'}/{rurwI'Daq} for "art gallery/museum", to name a
few. If he's really asking Okrand for words, this is the wrong way to go
about it, imesho.
Donna Myhrer has written a story that appears in the pamphlet. It was written
quite well, imesho, with only a few subtle grammatical errors.
That's basically it. The guy deserves lots of credit for doing what he does,
but at the same time, we can't let him run loose, because he's currently the
greatest Klingon teacher around, and, as a teacher, he doesn't quite have as
much of a handle on the language as he should, imesho. The main problems are
that he is not as fluent in the grammar and vocabulary as he perhaps should
be, and he's also very liberal, especially in the formation of words, like
*{vutDaq} and *{Qongpa'}.
I shall be contacting him soon, I hope, so if anyone has anything they'd like
to pass along, I'm the guy.
Guido