tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jan 08 07:07:19 2000

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Re: Teaching Klingon



ghItlh peHruS

>I have learned to appreciate a deductive
>approach to language learning.  This means using the language; this means not
>translating but thinking in the target language.  

Certainly I believe this is a desireable goal. And it's more easily achieved 
by someone with experience with other languages. Not because of the practice 
of having learned these languages, but because of the cognitive insights 
about Language in the larger and more abstract sense. For much the same 
reason that studying any new language gives you insight into your native 
language; you become aware that there is more than one way to do everything.

My own best works in Klingon (and I count my story "jubHa'" among these few) 
came from just such an attempt: thinking in Klingon, and only translating 
into English as an afterthought. 

>Obviously we do not get to practice with native Klingons.

net Sov.

>In conclusion, we are doing quite well.  I still feel the course of Klingon
>language development has been steered by English speakers, and this has
>indeed affected the language.

I believe this is pretty indisputable. But those are the facts. The language 
was created by a native English speaker (and we can compound all of this by 
specifying American English throughout), originally for a film whose largest 
single audience were all native English speakers. TKD was published with the 
same (or perhaps a more concentrated version of that) audience in mind. 

Realistically though, your choices come down to either having the language 
steered by a person or group dominated by *some* language, or letting the 
language flounder with out structure. The latter occurred in the years prior 
to the KLI, with plenty of people studying the language on their own, but 
rarely communicating with many others about it. I think we're better off now, 
and reaching more people, specifically including more people who are *not* 
native English speakers. For example, the KLI's merchant page on the web was 
originally created to help individuals outside the US obtain Klingon 
materials. 

My years as a research scientist and professor have taught me that it's 
usually all but impossible to eliminate bias. Instead, you make sure you're 
aware of such bias (and we are) and do such things as you can to counteract 
it when and where you can (and we do).  That doesn't mean the bias, in this 
case an English bias, doesn't exist. It does. But language study, like so 
much else, cannot exist in a vacuum.

I think we're all mostly on the same path, we're just all wearing different 
shoes.

Lawrence



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