tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jun 18 19:41:55 2001

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Re: To be or not to be Belanna

qIroS wrote:

> tlhIngan Hol was deemed inappropriate to include in the ISO codings,
> despite the application being backed by the KLI.
>
> It seems therefore that at least one (professional?) body of people
> disregard tlhIngan Hol as a real language.


Excuse my writing in English; I am not sure my Klingon is already adequate
for such discourses...

In this regard, there arise a few questions...

1) Do you really want to make Klingon an officially recognized language?
2) If so, what the best course may be.

What makes a language a language? Vocabulary and grammar - for sure.
Besides, languages need a number of those who speak and write them (or who
did so in the past - like the case is with Latin, Akkadian, Gothic, etc.).
Until the said number exceeds a certain lmit (let us call it the "critical
mass" of the language), the language in question will be considered
whatever, an argot, or a code (the difference between the two is quite often
slight indeed), but never a language.

Let us take, for instance, the story with the artificial languages invented
*en masse* during the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the one known best
is of course Esperanto. I can call besides Interlingva, Occidental, Volapuc,
IDO... there were about fifty, most of them long forgotten. L.Zamenhof, the
inventor of Esperanto, was at first ridiculed, but he himself lived long
enough to see first newspapers published in that language. How come? Easily.
He _advertized_ his work. Precisely like manufacturers advertize and promote
cigarettes, fridges, cars - whatever. He shouted, despite all sneers, at
every street corner that he had developed a perfect means of international
communication. He spoke in his Esperanto at congresses - and then demanded
that his pupils translated, as he refused to speak any other language when
speaking officially, *ex catedra*.

There is another way, that of Eliezer ben Yehuda, the guy who revived Hebrew
after two thousand years of obscurity. Today's Hebrew, by the way, is direct
development of the Biblical language, but its state in the late-19th
century... can you imagine a modern language which does not have a word for
"gunpowder"? Someone said at the time that Hebrew was extremely well suited
to throw calamity onto a city but impossible to use when one had to explain
workers how long and how deep a ditch should be. Ben Yehuda refused speaking
_any_ other language, even at home. His son, Itamar, was the first kid after
2,000 years for who Hebrew became mother tongue - but the price was the
boy's having grown up without friends, as his despotic father did not allow
him to communicate with those who could not speak Hebrew. Ben Yehuda said,
"Kdey lihyot am kemo kol a-amim, anachnu tzrichim lo raq eretz mishelanu,
ella gam sapha mishelanu", - "In order to be a people like all other
peoples, we need not only our own land, but also our own language". He
succeeded.

Okay, ben Yehuda's way is probably not what might be looked for. The task is
not establishing a nation of Klingons on this planet (though I am certain
with due efforts it would be possible, too). What I want, is raising the
language to the level of the aforementioned Esperanto, to make it a living
language like all other languages; maybe even to make it a universal means
of communication, with everybody needing to know only two languages - one's
natural mother tongue, and Klingon. This leads to another problem...

Any lawyers here? As far as I understand, even the word "Klingon" is
copyrighted by Paramaunt. Can one write in _Klingon_, say speeches in it,
publish anything in it - or one must buy the right to do so first? If yes, I
am not sure it can be done _at all_. If no, then --- then the road is open.
I personally would start with publishing a fantastically well-illustrated
dictionary, a picture book which will be bought, I assure you, even of pure
curiosity. People will tell each other, "What idiots, have you seen this?
The guys have never stopped playing..." - but they will buy the book. This
is what we want. Then there will follow _original_ prose - and do not forget
about a newspaper, let it not be daily. A weekly will do, but the stuff
there should be selected so that _a lot_ of people could get curious (here,
a very good marketing research is necessary - the publishers must know
exactly what people want to read about) - and start delving into the said
dictionary in order to understand what the hell it is all about...

You give me twenty years, and the language can well become a fairly real
accomplished fact. I am not sure I will see it, though.

Thanks for your attention,

Qapla'

Igor

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