tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 19 11:36:37 1996
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Interview with Okrand
- From: David Barron <[email protected]>
- Subject: Interview with Okrand
- Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 12:36:35 -0700 (MST)
The following was an interview with Marc Okrand that I snagged from
alt.startrek.klingon
> OnlineHost: Smithsonian Online would like to welcome Marc
> : Okrand, creator of the Klingon language and the
> : Vulcan dialogue for many of the Star Trek movies.
> : Tonight, Mr. Okrand will answer questions about
> : the Star Trek languages he developed.
> : Welcome, Mr. Okrand!
> MarcOkrand: It's good to be here. This is the first time I've done
> something like this, and I'm really looking forward to it.
>
> Comment: Good evening, Mr.Okrand. Nice to meet you, so to type!
>
> Comment: Mr. Okrand- I love the tapes and think it is great that
> you, in essence, created the Klingon Language. -Dani Zandel
> MarcOkrand: Thank you. When I first worked on the language, I thought
> it was going to be just
> a few lines of dialogue for a film. It turned into a real language
> after that.
>
> Question: Mr. Okrand, are you happy with Worf's addition to the cast
> of DS9?
> MarcOkrand: YES! I am really happy that Worf is back. For a few
> reasons -- but mainly because now that Worf is back, the Klingons are
> back. So it's not just Worf -- it's Gowron and the whole gang. This
> means more Klingon stories and (I hope) more Klingon language.
>
> Question: I can't imagine making up a language. What is the first
> step you took?
> MarcOkrand: Well, I was lucky, because there was a tiny bit of Klingon
> before I started. In the original series, there was no Klingon
> language ever heard, but they talked about the language. In fact, in
> "Tribble,"
> they say that everyone (well, not everyone, but a good chunk of the
> quadrant) was learning "Klingonese" because the Klingons were so
> important. Anyway, the first time we really heard the language was the
> beginning of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE. There are maybe half a
> dozen lines, and then the Klingons all get zapped and are never seen again.
> But I was able to build on the little bit of language that the Klingon
> captain spoke. Actually, those lines were spoken by Mark Lenard, who is
> usually Spock's father, and were devised by James Doohan, who is usually
> Scotty. So the Klingon language really started as a collaboration between a
> Federation engineer and a Vulcan. But don't tell the Klingons that.
>
> Question: Did you have problems teaching the actors to speak in
> Klingon? How did you solve them?
> MarcOkrand: All of the actors did a very good job. Some of them
> learned more quickly than others, of course, but they all took their
> tasks very seriously. Sometimes I worked with an actor a lot;
> sometimes a
> little bit. But the amount of time I spent with the actor didn't
> necessarily have anything to do with how well they did. Sometimes I
> had to
> repeat the words over and over again for the actor; sometimes they got
> it on the first try. Some of the sounds are a lot easier than others.
>
> Question: I have a friend who is developing a Cardassian language.
> What is the status for accepting such things?
> MarcOkrand: To tell you the truth, I don't know. I got into it the
> other way: I was asked to create Klingon (well, first Vulcan) dialogue
> for the films, then later the language grew. I know of a number of people
> who are working on Romulan or Ferengi or whatever -- and that is great.
> But I didn't come to the Star Trek folks with a language already worked out.
> It grew because the writers of a couple of the films needed the dialogue.
> But tell your friend not to give up! You never know when the Cardassians
> may have a lot to say.
>
> Question: What kind of training prepared you for making up a
> language?
> MarcOkrand: I studied linguistics for years and years before ever
> getting involved in language creation. I have a doctorate in
> linguistics from UC Berkeley and have done research on a number
> of different languages -- most of them very different from Englihs. I
> mean English. This helped with Klingon a lot because I wanted Klingon to be
> as different from English as I could make it, and knowing what real
> languages do and don't do helped.
>
> Question: Were you a STAR TREK fan before you made up the language?
> MarcOkrand: Yes. Although I've become much more of a fan after making
> it up. When the original Star Trek was on TV, I was in college and
> didn't have a TV, so I didn't see it, though I did hear about it and saw the
> reruns eventually. When I was asked to work on the films, I thought it
> would be a terrific thing to do -- and extra terrific, if that makes
> any sense, because it was Star Trek.
>
> Question: What did Patrick Stewart think of the Klingon language? He
> seemed to pronounce it so well.
> MarcOkrand: Actually, Patrick Stewart is the only member of the cast
> of the original series or Next Generation who I've never spoken with!
> So I don't know what he thought. But I agree with you -- he does make
> Klingon sound really good.
>
> Question: Wasn't it hard to think out the grammar and sentence
> structures?
> MarcOkrand: Some was easy, some was hard. The really hard part was
> figuring out what to do when the actors made an error in
> pronunciation, or
> if they left out a word, or something like
> that. Then I had to come up with a theory for why they really were
> speaking correctly, and the grammar changed a bit. Sometimes it wasn't
> the actors' fault. In a few instances, Paramount changed the subtitles
> after the filming was finished!
>
> Question: Did you borrow from other languages when you created
> Klingon? Or is it an entirely new language?
> MarcOkrand: I did not intentionally borrow. But, having said that,
> you can't help but be influenced by what you know. So I studied some
> Far Eastern languages, and there are influences from languages from that
> part of the world. And I studied American Indian languages, and there are
> influences from that. But I also got ideas from languages from other
> parts of the world. Sometimes, I looked at a language, and then
> intentionally
> did it backwards or something like that, just to make it different.
>
> Question: Are you planning on the development of the Vulcan
> language? Did you base its use in the 2nd movie from the bits in the
> first?
> MarcOkrand: Let's take those two questions in reverse order. The
> Vulcan in the second movie comes from two sources. First, the sounds
> are supposed to match up pretty closely with those in the first movie. (I
> didn't work on the first movie -- I don't know who made up the Vulcan
> for that -- does anybody out there know who did it?). The second source,
> actually, was English. Spock
> and Saavik -- well, Leonard Nimoy and Kirstie Alley -- were filmed
> speaking English in that scene. Then the producers and writers decided
> they should be speaking Vulcan instead of English, so I devised sounds
> for them to make that matched the English lip movements that were already
> filmed. Then we dubbed it in, lip-synching. As for the further
> development of Vulcan -- I do have some ideas, but it's not fully
> worked out yet. I hope somebody writes a good Vulcan episode or something
> so that I can work on that and maybe spread the Vulcan language around.
>
> Question: Is it really important if an actor mispronounces a made-up
> Klingon word? Are there "regional" dialects?
> MarcOkrand: Well, we try very hard to have the actors NOT mispronounce
> the words -- because we want all of the Klingons to be able to
> understand
> each other. And, yes -- there are regional dialects. In fact, in Star
> Trek VI, there's a Klingon -- a guard at an outpost -- who speaks a
> very odd dialect of Klingon. The idea was that it was an older stage of
> the language (sort of like English filled with "thee" and "speakest" and
> all of that).
>
> Question: Has Klingon changed as people use it? How is it different
> from the language you created?
> MarcOkrand: Yes -- it has changed. First of all, it's grown a lot.
> People have had to come up with words that I hadn't invented, so they
> put together pieces of the language to create compound words. Just like a
> regular language grows! The grammar has changed a bit too, or rather,
> has grown. I've had to introduce some new grammatical features to
> accommodate dialogue that was written later on.
>
> Question: Did you know that Klingon Language is offered at some
> community colleges?
> MarcOkrand: I've heard that, though I don't know which ones. I know
> of linguistics courses that talk about Klingon, and I know of some
> summer classes. There are also "private" schools that teach Klingon.
>
> Question: Is anyone going to publish any more books on Klingon?
> MarcOkrand: Yes... I am! In fact, there is a new book coming out
> next month about Klingon. It's called "The Klingon Way: A Warrior's
> Guide." It's a collection of Klingon aphorisms, proverbs, wise
> sayings, and all of that -- each one in English and Klingon, with a short
> explanation (for some of them) of how they came to be said, or
> problems with translation, or whatever. Also lots of pictures!
>
> Question: When you worked on the films, did you actually spend time
> on the sets? Or did you just create the language and coach the
> actors?
> MarcOkrand: I was actually on the set most of the time. I spent about
> a month on the Genesis Planet! In most of the shots where you see
> Klingons speaking, I'm just out of the camera's view.
> And I'm sure I'm on a cutting-room floor somewhere at Paramount also,
> because sometimes I would say the Klingon lines for an off-camera
> speaker
> for some of the shots. I got to spend a lot of time on the bridges
> of the Klingon ships. And I got to sneak onto the Enterprise as well.
> It really was something to be able to do that. I would show up even on
> days when nobody was speaking Klingon just so I could be there and watch
> what was going on.
>
> Question: Do you use online services, or is this something that you
> are doing for the Smithsonian? If you do use them, do you ever browse
> to see what people are saying about the Klingons? -Dani Zandel
> MarcOkrand: This is something I'm doing for the Smithsonian.... but I
> have wandered around the Internet a bit, checking into what's going on
> with the Klingon language and Klingons in general. I don't do it all
> that often, however -- mostly because I'm pretty green at all of this.
>
> Question: How do you feel about these Klingon Language camps? And
> even the Bible being translated in to Klingon? Do you think some are
> going too far?
> MarcOkrand: I haven't attended any of the Klingon language camps
> myself, but I understand that they were a lot of fun. I think they're
> a great idea. Partly because people who like Klingon get to get
> together.
> But also because by learning one language, you learn about language in
> general. I've heard stories about people at the camps who were able
> to learn enough Klingon to convince themselves that they could learn
> other languages as well -- and then they went off and took courses in some
> Earth language. As for translating the Bible -- I'd answer pretty much the
> same> way. By translating anything, you have to figure out exactly what
> the original really means in order to convey the same idea in the second
> language. So the people doing this translation are learning not only
> about Klingon, but probably even more about Greek and Hebrew and so on
> (they're translating from the original -- not from English!).
>
> Question: What inspired the words for the Klingon foods?
> MarcOkrand: Actually, I only know about the names for one of the
> Klingon foods. Some of the names (like pipius claw) were made up by
> the Star Trek writers. But the most famous Klingon food is probably gagh.
>
> That word, I think, comes from me, but it got mangled a little bit. I
> made up a word for "serpent" or "worm" (ghargh). When the actors said
> it, the pronunciation changed a bit. So I decided that ghargh was a worm
> that was crawling on the ground, and gagh was the same creature when
> prepared as food.
>
> Question: Dear Mr. Okrand, is this your name or is your name in Star
> Trek language?
> MarcOkrand: It's really my name. But there is a Klingon version. At
> least of my first name. When I was working on Star Trek VI,
> Christopher
> Plummer, who played Gen. Chang, used to call me "MarH" (where the "H"
> is like the ch in the name of the composer Bach). He said that was the
> -end-
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