tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jun 19 12:54:33 2001

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RE: To be or not to be Belanna


What does it mean for Klingon to be an "officially recognized" language?
Which body establishes such recognition?  What are their guidelines?  I'm
not aware of such authority, but if it's there, enlighten us.  If you didn't
mean "official," then we're left with "recognition," which we should always
strive to increase.

We already do have several publications, along the lines of the newspaper
you suggest.  The "Kronos Journal" ({Qo'noS QonoS}) is published monthly by
the KLI.  {jatmey} (the literary magazine "scattered tongues") is published
irregularly.  And of course there's {HolQeD}.

>From a legal standpoint, I don't think we could get away with publishing a
dictionary.  But we can certainly publish other works through the KLI, such
as we did with {Hamlet}.

--Holtej 'utlh

tlhIngan-Hol Mailing List FAQ
http://www.bigfoot.com/~dspeers/klingon/faq.htm

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Aryeh ben Naphtali [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Monday, June 18, 2001 5:42 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: 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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