tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 21 13:03:31 1998
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Re: RE: food
On Mon, 21 Dec 1998 11:53:15 -0800 (PST) "Artist, Herbert"
<[email protected]> wrote:
> I'd love to learn the language but it seems too advance to
> learn or people don't seem to be willing to teach.
Okay, let's take that in three parts:
"I'd love to learn the language."
Show us. If you'd really love to learn it, express that love.
Buy "The Klingon Dictionary" by Marc Okrand, read up some, and
make an effort at using the language. If you can't handle that,
then you disrespect the word "love" and use it far too casually.
"It seems too hard to learn."
There are quite a few people who can speak this language. Many,
but not all, contribute to this Email list. Many, but not all,
get together once a year for a week of frolicking, previously in
Philadephia, but next year in Las Vegas. Do you really think we
are all smarter than you are? People are learning it. If it were
too hard to learn, then people probably wouldn't be learning it.
"People don't seem to be willing to teach."
Consider French, Chinese or Russian, or even Cherokee or
Malasian language or Dutch. Whatever. Do you know any Email
lists where people will go to as much effort as we do to help
people learn the language? Email as a medium has its limits, but
I think we do a respectable job of working to help others speak
the language.
It takes less genius than patience, though if you have any
genius to apply, that might save you some time. Don't expect to
take it in all at once. Learn a little, then add to that
something else and add to that something else, and in a year or
two, you'll probably be good at this. If you can't muster the
persistence to keep this as a hobby that long, then, well, it is
not that the language is too hard for you or nobody is willing
to help you learn it. It is that you are not willing to invest
the necessary persistence to learn it. You don't have to be
fixated on it. You just have to keep at it, little bits at a
time until you have taken in the basic understanding of it all.
That's when the knowledge you nurtured gains a critical mass and
it just plain gets easier to add more to what you've already
learned.
I wish you well in your decision and respect your free choice to
either put in the effort to begin learning the language, or go
off and live a full life with some OTHER avocations.
charghwI' 'utlh