tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 27 22:10:09 2002
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Re: Klingonase vs. tlhIngan Hol
ja' charghwI':
>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.
bo'DaghHom yIlo'Qo'.
Don't belittle the man's work. He came up with much more than just some
words to drop into English sentences. One of the minor themes of the book
was something about how certain concepts could be adequately expressed only
in one language or the other. The one human who seemed to completely
understood Klingon culture was the one who had learned the language fully.
>[Ford] never intended to
>make up a language. He was just trying to add a little depth to his fictional
>characters.
He didn't intend to make up a language which could be useful "in the real
world" the way tlhIngan Hol is, but what he did create was far more than an
ornament for his characters to display. What is portrayed in "The Final
Reflection" *is* a complete language. But in the same way we are shown
only those details of Captain Krenn's life which further the story, we see
only part of Klingonaase. The parts we don't see aren't documented
anywhere.
That makes Klingonaase a *fictional* language rather than a *real* one,
which I believe is the relevant distinction here. :-)
-- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh