tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jul 27 01:33:09 1995

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}}} Dialects (was: Klingon paintball)

Chris Nielsen writes:
>...I therefore propose we form our own dialect.  This seems to be the largest
>active group of Klingon speakers in the world, so why not a sort of human
>dialect?

Because it would be bad. :-)
Seriously, a major guiding principle of this list is that additions to the
vocabulary are to be avoided.  The purpose of language is communication,
and unless everybody knows what the words mean, communication fails.  There
is one source of new words (Marc Okrand), and one main channel for making
those words known (HolQeD).

Also, there are really two overlapping groups involved.  This list (well,
the tlhIngan-Hol list, actually), which is pretty much open to anyone with
e-mail, is the day-to-day, in-the-trenches, try-things-out,
person-to-person group.  There is also the membership of the Klingon
Language Institute, the readers of and contributors to HolQed, the KLI's
quarterly journal.  Due to the time involved and the different format,
things in HolQeD tend to be more "scholarly" and often pertain to deep
assumptions and speculations about the language.

We also must not forget the others who are in neither of these two groups.
Anyone with a copy of The Klingon Dictionary should theoretically be able
to understand the Klingon posted to this list.  Unrestricted additions to
the vocabulary would certainly destroy that ability.

I believe we have a good compromise here.  Keep the additions to the
absolute minimum.  After seven months on the list, I think I've encountered
most of the "we really don't know how to say that yet" problems.  Okrand
has provided words when truly necessary (most recently {qa'vIn} for
"coffee") and has clarified certain troublesome areas of the grammar.  Now
that the KLI is officially licensed by Paramount, it's at least possible
that a new KLI-sponsored Klingon Dictionary might be produced,
incorporating the latest vocabulary and explaining more subtleties of
grammar.

By the way, it's common practice here to simply drop in a word or two in
English when the dictionary fails.  An untranslatable food name isn't
always cause for another Klingon word.

-- ghunchu'wI'

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