tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 19 19:42:00 2002
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Re: QeD De'wI' ngermey
At 18:41 17/11/2002 -0500, lab ghunchu'wI'
>Someone ought to catalog the stages through which Klingon language students
>go.
Heh. I agree. I think I'll put it on my website. Can't you just see the
posts? "Okrand doesn't care about the language!" and the follow up
simply. "Classic stage 4b post."
There's a bit of a tree, branching into different stages depending on the
person and their contact with the Klingon-speaking community. I went
through all these:
"Wow, it's almost as if you could actually learn to speak this language."
"I'll be the only person in the world to do this, but I'm going to see if
it can be really used."
Person reads the language description, but makes little or no attempt to
memorize it.
Asking a thousand nitpicking questions. "How do you pronounce two glottal
stops? What's the difference between 'utlh and yaS? Can I say
/vIlaDlI'vIS/?
Person is inspired by the vocabulary to try translating some great work of
literature.
Person finds a hammer-shaped suffix and uses it to death. (Thanks, Voragh
for taking the time to argue with me about V6s).
Person can't find a way to express a particular concept, declares Klingon
unusable or useless. (For me it was a lack of a way to say "X is not a Y"
-- I hadn't noticed verb suffixes on pronouns.)
Person becomes frustrated with Marc Okrand for not creating the required
vocabulary, or for appearing to care more about jokes than useability.
Person makes great "discoveries" about how the language could be expanded
using existing tools.
Person develops their own pet peeves about misuse and hammers on hapless
beginners who go there.
There's a HolQeD article in there somewhere.