tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 12 18:41:03 2007

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Why Do You Study Klingon?

...Paul ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

I was thinking, on the train ride home from work, my MP3 player having run 
out of juice that morning.

A few things stuck in my mind...  One, Klingon lives and dies at the 
behest of Okrand.  Two, Klingon is "not a code".

It got me thinking about a few things.  What's the point?

Language is a means of communicating ideas.  Most of us already speak 
English, so if we need to communicate ideas, we already have a mechanism 
for doing so.  What advantage does knowing Klingon gain us?  Personally, I 
learned a lot about linguistics, in general, from 'studying' Klingon.  It 
was the primary point of interest for me.  That's why discussing nuances 
of connotation and things like that are the most interesting to me (even 
if those discussions aren't in Klingon).  As as secondary point, I'm a 
geek, I fully admit it, and being able to say, "I know Klingon" to making 
"normal people" look at me funny is pretty fun.

But what reason do I have to actually *use* it?  What reason does anyone 
have to use any constructed language?  Or any naturally evolved language?

Learning a foreign language can be useful if you're going to visit a 
foreign land and want to speak to the natives.  Or if you're simply 
dealing with people from other countries.  But we're not likely to be 
visiting any place where people speak Klingon natively, and I doubt any 
real business will be handled in the language.  So that purpose seems 
lacking.

Ultimately, the purpose of a language is to communicate ideas.  The whole 
point of constructing Esperanto was to develop a common language that 
could be shared internationally (although arguably, English has simply 
been elevated to this level through natural evolution).

Linguistically, there are things that languages do differently.  Some can 
convey certain ideas more easily than others, but may lack certain ideas. 
By studying another language, one can find a greater understanding of 
their native language.  This is perhaps the greatest reason to study 
Klingon.

But what do you do with the language once you've learned it?  What's the 
difference between using Klingon to talk about the Nintendo Wii (no 
offense, Doq, just the most recent example of a random conversation done 
in the language), and using a "code" to talk about the Nintendo Wii?

I accept "practice" as an answer, no worries -- but the point remains; if 
you've practiced the language enough to feel comfortable with it, what 
then?  You can't really decide to take a vacation to Qo'noS to try out 
your skills on the natives.  :)

There is really only one point I can think of for continuing to use the 
language, and that is to expand it.  The return on investment is the 
feeling that you've done something to contribute to the evolution of the 
language.  And I don't even necessarily mean that we start letting people 
'make up words' and such.  One would hope that after long discussions 
(around things like /-meH/, etc.) we could come to a concensus, and 
somehow record these decisions for posterity, and, until further notice, 
refer to them as 'authoritative'.

I differentiate this from contributing *content*, because really, this 
becomes no different than "encoding".  The Shakespearean translations are 
amazing works, and I don't want to detract from the effort and achievement 
they represent.  But usually the purpose of translating someone is such 
that persons who don't speak the language a work was original conceived 
in, can similarly enjoy the ideas presented.  As no one speaks Klingon 
natively who doesn't also speak another language fluently...

Lieven has noted that English is NOT his native language, so speaking in 
Klingon would be a way to bridge the language divide -- indeed, this is 
the whole point of languages like Esperanto.  But what makes Klingon more 
attractive as a language than learning Esperanto?  Or German?  Or even a 
"dead" language, like Latin?

I'm not trying to convince people learning Klingon is pointless; I admit 
fully that learning it (or at least, learning what I've learned) has given 
me more insight into language as a whole.  But I wonder what the point of 
*using* the language is...

Maybe I've just hit a personal point where what I get out of 
studying/using the language is limited; there's no more benefit I can get 
from it, at least not until Okrand comes out with something new that may 
give us more interesting linguistic concepts to chew over (and vocabulary 
isn't going to do that -- I'm talking about something more meaty, like 
grammatical syntax clarifications, new suffixes, etc...)

I'm curious what other people "get" out of studying Klingon, particularly 
some of the long-timers, like Alan and Steven, Terrence and DloraH...

Maybe it's just time for me to break down and try to pick up a real-world 
language, or start investing some time into another conlang like Lojban or 
Esperanto...

...Paul

PS>  My email signatures are randomly selected, but it's very odd how 
appropriate they tend to be...  I think the one that came up below is 
particularly appropriate to this conversation...

          ** ...Paul, [email protected], Insane Engineer **
   ** Visit Project Galactic Guide http://www.galactic-guide.com/ **
   "Do not follow where the path may lead.  Go instead where there
           is no path and leave a trail." -- Muriel Strode

Back to archive top level