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Klingon has no word for HelloNicole said May 28, 9:38 AM: |
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A history of the gruff but surprisingly sophisticated invented language and the people who speak it.By Arika OkrentPosted Thursday, May 7, 2009, at 11:54 AM ET There's something missing from J.J. Abrams' reboot of the moribund Star Trek franchise, and that something is Klingon. I mean Klingon the language. If that sounds like a minor omission, consider this: The very first lines of the first Star Trek movie in 1979 were in Klingon: wIy cha'! HaSta! cha yIghuS! And those few words—which were subtitled as “Tactical … Visual … Tactical, stand by on torpedoes!”—have since blossomed into, if not a full-fledged language, one at least fledged enough to have a dictionary, a translation of Hamlet, and a small but dedicated community of (nonfictional) speakers, who'll feel miffed by Abrams' oversight…… Klingon is a sophisticated, extremely complex language that very few can master. I first came to Klingon as a linguist doing research for a book on artificial languages. My intention was to observe from a nice, distant, scientific perspective, but somehow I ended up with a little bronze pin indicating that I'd passed the first-level certification exam. The grammar offered an irresistible linguistic challenge. Klingon is difficult but not impossible, weird yet totally believable. Anyone can put on a pair of pointed ears or memorize some lines of dialogue, but learning to speak Klingon requires genuine hard work.Most languages created for fictional worlds involve simple vocabulary substitutions, such as moodge for man in A Clockwork Orange, or meaningless streams of noise, like the high-pitched jabbering of the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi. Klingon is something altogether different. There is a logic behind it; a linguist doing field research among Klingon speakers would be able to work out the system and describe it as he would an exotic indigenous tongue. This is not surprising, considering that Klingon was created by Marc Okrand, a linguist whose dissertation was a grammar of a now-extinct Native American language… here for more |
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Re: Klingon has no word for HelloMeenakshi said May 28, 7:05 PM: |
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I'm not a natural greeter, preferring to just get into conversation - and doing that with those I'm closest to, without guilt! So the title drew me in- no 'hello'? My type of folk. |
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Re: Klingon has no word for HelloNicole said May 29, 3:57 AM: |
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LOL Meenakshi! No, somehow I don't see you as a Klingon type of person, and I mean that in the best way - Hugs! |
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