tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 25 09:30:05 2002

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Re: Klingonase vs. tlhIngan Hol

> I stand corrected on the spelling of canon. 

No big deal. I initially misspelled it, myself, until someone pointed it out to 
me.


> That is
> what I was trying to say.  Not everything, Officially,
> written in the TKD is canon, according to Star Trek
> faans.  Although, I was trying to make a point.  The
> point is that some people will probaly use Ford's
> language, but more often than not they will use
> Okrand's Language. 

You missed my point. Nobody has ever used "Ford's Language". Not even 
Ford has ever used Ford's language because Ford never had a language. 
He is a fiction writer, not a linguist. He made up words and defined them. 
Mostly, he made up nouns. He sprinkled them in with his English text, but 
he never developed a language. He doesn't know how and he's not 
particularly interested in learning how.

By contrast, Okrand is a linguist, excellently qualified to develop his own 
language and he has done just that. tlhIngan Hol is a language. 
Klinganaase is a myth; a minor tool for fiction writers. It is not a language 
and never has been, and likely never will be. If it ever DOES become a 
language, someone other than Ford is going to have to do it, since Ford 
has no reason to do it and no inclination to do it. He never intended to 
make up a language. He was just trying to add a little depth to his fictional 
characters.

> & until either language is used,
;> completely on t. v. or in the movies, what is used is
> the only part that will be considered canon.  So

I'll bet you $10 you can't write "Where's the bathroom?" in Klingonaase. 
You can't say, "Don't stab me with that knife!" in Klingonaase. You can't 
say, "My captain ordered me to be here at 6am," in Klingonaase. I can say 
all these things and many more in tlhIngan Hol.

nuqDaq 'oH puchpa''e'?
HIDuQQo'! tajvetlh yIroQ!
mura'mo' HoDwI', javvatlh rep naDev jIpawnIS.

Klingonaase is useless for expressing ideas. You could not use it for 
basic survival communication without some other common language to 
drop Klingonaase words into. It is useful only to fans who will memorize 
certain terms in Klingonaase and use them instead of the English 
equivalent. In essence, Klingonaase is most charitably described as 
"jargon". It is a set of words that certain English speakers understand, 
useful only in a very limited context, and even then, only in English 
sentences. It is a set of code words. It is not a language by ANYBODY'S 
criterion. It is, at best, a fictional rumor of a language that exists 
somewhere, even though nobody really knows how to speak it.

Have I made my point yet?

> what's the big deal.

Have I made my point yet?

charghwI'

> --- Qov <[email protected]> wrote:
> > lab charghwI':
> > 
> >  > The word "canon" is spelled "c-a-n-o-n" not
> > "cannon". The former is 
> > something > you accept as from a reliable authority.
> > The latter is a gun, 
> > typically too large
> >  > to carry without mechanical assistance. Anything
> > written or spoken by Dr.
> >  > Marc Okrand is canon. He invented the language we
> > call tlhIngan Hol.
> >  > Anything else is not canon.
> > 
> > charghwI' is perfectly correct with respect to
> > tlhIngan Hol, but it must be 
> > noted that the KLI has no monopoly on the use of the
> > word "canon."
> > 
> > Star Trek fans, as opposed to Klingonists, use
> > "canon" to describe that 
> > which has appeared on screen in one of the TV shows,
> > excluding the animated 
> > series, or one of the movies.  Star Trek books,
> > while interesting to some 
> > and reviled by others, are not canon Star Trek. 
> > Information cut from 
> > scripts, like Saavik being half Romulan, are not
> > canon Star Trek.  The 
> > Klingon Dictionary, while Paramount sanctioned, and
> > used in movies, is not 
> > Star Trek canon.  Only those lines of dialogue
> > actually appearing in the 
> > finished versions of movies are Star Trek canon.
> > 
> > Klingonists use "canon" to describe tlhIngan Hol
> > published or officially 
> > proclaimed by Marc Okrand.  TKD is tlhIngan Hol
> > canon.  KGT and TKW are 
> > tlhIngan Hol canon.  New words and grammar explained
> > by Mark Okrand in an 
> > interview for HolQeD is tlhIngan Hol canon.   To be
> > fair to Marc, what he 
> > scrawls in autographed books, or what he mutters in
> > the restaurant at 
> > qep'a', should probably not be considered tlhIngan
> > Hol canon.  The point 
> > is, only one person makes up new tlhIngan Hol, and
> > he should be given the 
> > opportunity to think things over, and the freedom to
> > practice his own 
> > language without his mistakes being canonized!
> > 
> > Someone made the point about there being two
> > different usages of the word 
> > canon, in an earlier post, but it was at the end of
> > a long post and may 
> > have been missed.
> > 
> 
> 
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