tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jul 13 14:53:11 1997
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Re: We are klingons
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>Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 16:27:52 -0700 (PDT)
>From: "Ty Cobb" <[email protected]>
>
>There is no such thing as a Klingon. Do you people understand that
>you are attempting to learn a language that NO ONE really speaks.
>Perhaps next time a comet passes by, you can jump on and visit the
>Klingon high master in person. To quote William Shatner:
>"GET A LIFE"
>
>Ty Cobb
This is a criticism often aimed, and it probably deserves an answer, even
when phrased as rudely as this. Frankly, I think it should be in the FAQ.
d'Armond? (is it one already?)
So, why do we study Klingon when it's not a "real" language? There are a
lot of answers, some more polite than others. A simple, quick one I'm fond
of is "in a society where we spend billions of dollars watching other
people get physical exercise and researching new and exciting ways to drape
fabric around our bodies, I don't think we can be criticized for studying a
little linguistics." Abrupt, but it's something to think about.
Dr. Lawrence Schoen has been known to point out to people who make fun of
the legendary fanaticism of Star Trek fans that if you walked into any
sports bar in the country and asked the most obscure sports trivia question
you wanted, you'd find people *proud* to be able to answer. Is that any
"worse" than people who can answer trivia questions about *their* interest,
Star Trek?
But beyond "well, it's not worse than other people's craziness," there's
also something a bit more, beyond Star Trek fandom. Note that many people
have become interested in Klingon NOT because of any allegiance to Star
Trek, but because of an interest in linguistics. Our members include
published Ph.D's of linguistics. See, Klingon may not be a "natural"
language, in the sense of a language spoken by any existing nationality.
But that doesn't make it not worth studying. Even a constructed language
can teach many things about how languages in general work, and learning to
speak one can really help open your eyes to how your brain works in
thinking and in translating thoughts to sentences. Klingon is *not* some
simple word-for-word encoding of English (no language is, except games like
Pig Latin). It's a _language_, a "real" one, not in the sense of having a
nationality behind it, but in the sense of having a well-developed and
unique grammar, a sentence-structure that is all its own, and as such it
imposes its structure on its sentences, just as any language does... and
thus teaches you a little more about how you've been dealing with the
structure your native language has been imposing on you all along. So I'd
say that studying Klingon really *is* studying linguistics, or a facet of
it. That's a pretty noble calling, and I'm not ashamed of it.
Besides, how can you say that we're learning a language that "NO ONE"
really speaks? *WE* speak it! And we can understand one another when
speaking it. That's what a language is all about, isn't it?
Communicating? And we can successfully use it for that.
Hope that helps.
~mark
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