tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Sep 14 19:37:34 1997

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Re: mung tlhIngan-Hol

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>Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 14:46:48 -0700 (PDT)
>From: da Hiasl <[email protected]>
>
>tlhIngan-Hol must have similarities of any dead or living language
>because there are more than netlh of 'em . 

Sure it has similarities with existing languages.  But it wasn't based on
any ONE.

>I'm no linguist but I think tlhIngan-Hol must
>be of
>    incorporating , aggluinative kind .
>
>Or do you know any tlhIngan inflections ?

Yes, it's mostly an agglutinating language.  Not much in the way of
inflections.


>TlhIngan-Hol lacks big irregulations , which is more a feature of invented
>languages . 

Yes, it is noticeably constructed in its regularity.  Though I for one
found it a little refreshing, after having read dozens of constructed
languages each harping on how regular they were to find one that had even a
few irregularities and wasn't ashamed of it.  (of course, now I've met with
a lot more irregular conlangs).

>One features is that it has less than thirty sounds . Nearly
>any language on earth has more , but Hawaiian has less than twenty . 

Depends on how you count; some people like to count the diphthongs as
phonemes.  Yeah, it's on the low side in phoneme count, what's your point?
It has to fall SOMEWHERE on the curve; if it were dead-average you'd
complain it wasn't alien enough.  *shrug* it has sounds, it has some of
them, not as many as some languages, more than others (Hawai'ian isn't the
record-holder, I think)... it works.

>What I miss in Klingon and other constructed languages is that they have
>all these human linguistic features other human languages have , although
>I have to say that Okrand's grammar of tlhIngan-Hol has features which
>are completly different from any modern Western language . 

That was the point.

>Maybe mankind has to meet real aliens so that we can image how an alien
>language should look like . It also would be a happy surprise for
>every linguist . 
>
>I personally think , tlhIngan look too much like humans . 

Yes, it's been said before, and demonstrated, that if you REALLY wanted a
truly incredibly absolutely alien language not at all like any human
languages... well, you could do better than Klingon.  You could, however,
also do a hell of a lot worse (and many people have), so I'm not too
disappointed.  Besides, if you wanted an alien race that was truly unlike
humans, Star Trek isn't the place to look anyway.

~mark

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