tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Sep 25 11:36:22 2000
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Re: Navajo code-talkers
[email protected] writes:
> I seem to recall that Okrand studied Native American languages. Does
> anyone have any info on whether he specifically based parts of Klingon
> on Navajo, and which parts?
peHruS:
: I, too, do not have proof upon which languages Marc Okrand based Klingon. I
: have heard that it deliberately is supposed to be unlike any known language
: here on Earth. Of course, we are influenced by what we know. I have also
: heard that he likes Salish (Kootenai) a lot. I personally have discovered
Okrand wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on Mutsun, which is an extinct Costanoan (a
group of languages - also called Costano, Ohlone, Penutian - spoken in the San
Francisco Bay area of California) dialect. Here's the bibliographic record for
his 1977 dissertation for those interested:
Okrand, Marc, 1948-
Mutsun grammar.
viii, 350 leaves.
Typescript (photocopy). Ann Arbor, Mich. : University Microfilms
International, 1981.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 1977.
Bibliography: leaves 347-350.
Ohlone language.
Mutsun dialect--Grammar.
: some direct take-overs from Mayan, Quechua and Aztec. Some of the structure
: seems to be a lot like that of Navajo.
Several of us have read his dissertation and the consensus is that, although
there isn't any direct borrowing of vocabulary (either whole words or affixes),
there are some grammatical features of Mutsun - or at least Okrand's
reconstruction of Mutsun - which seem very familiar to Klingon-speakers.
(These may, however, just be features of several Native North American language
groups - such as the subject-plus-object verb prefixes, the experience or
"certainty" verb suffixes [i.e. whether a statement is based on direct
knowledge vs. hearsay], etc. - unfamiliar to speakers of modern European
languages. There are also, it must be noted, *many* features of Mutsun which
are completely absent in Klingon: most notably grammatical tense (though
Mutsun verbs do have aspect).
: Again, I have no proof. I like to think that he did a good job of mixing up
: things so that Klingon does not closely resemble anything we already have.
Agreed. I'm sure that was the point: Okrand probably didn't want anyone saying
that Klingon is just a simplified and distorted version of [fill in the blank]
language.
... not to mention all the jokes and puns (from several languages!) he added.
<g>
--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons