Considering the number of times I’ve been asked whether I speak Klingon — which I’m certain is more often a result of my general bookishness Urkel-like nature than any true consideration of my linguistic knowledge — I should not be as amused by this as I am.  Akira Okrent, a fellow linguist-nerd, traces the history and development of the Klingon language.

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.

True.  Klingon is one of the few “made for cinema” languages that has actually been developed into a full-fledged language, albeit that there is a school of thought that languages can only truly be considered as such when they have native speakers (which, of course, Klingon is decidedly lacking in).  Usually when asked if I speak Klingon, I respond that I prefer to stick to real languages.  For purely economic reasons, in fact, I tend to gravitate towards commercially viable languages.  Many of my linguist colleagues will happily spend years learning languages with an isolated speaker base of 1000 or less people world-wide, in order to get a better handle on the universalities of human language.  While such pursuits fascinate me, my bread-and-butter, so to speak, is in second language acquisition, so I tend to stick to languages that a broad swathe of the population would be interested in learning.  Nothing against such pursuits, and in fact, one of my (eventual) career goals is to embrace the David Crystal challenge of documenting an endangered language, but to date, probably the most obscure language I’ve studied thus far is Hokkien Chinese (pop. 35 million speakers).

That said, I can still see why people would be interested in learning Klingon.  In developing the language, Marc Okrand took almost the exact opposite track from Esperanto.  Esperanto was created to be learner-friendly, but Klingon was basically pulled together from every difficult trick in the linguist’s arsenel.

Klingon sentence structure is about as complex as it gets. Most people are familiar with the idea that verb endings can indicate person and number. In Spanish, the -o suffix on a verb like hablar (to speak) indicates a first-person singular subject (hablo—I speak) while the -amos suffix indicates a first-person plural subject (hablamos—we speak). But Klingon uses prefixes rather than suffixes, and instead of having six or seven of them, like most romance languages, it has 29. There are so many because they indicate not only the person and number of the subject (who is doing) but also of the object (whom it is being done to). In the “Live long and prosper” translation above, for example, the Da- on SIQ indicates a second-person subject and a third-person object (”You endure it”), and the bI- on the verb chep indicates a second-person subject and no object (”You prosper”).

As if that weren’t complicated enough, Klingon also has a large set of suffixes. Attached to the end of the verbs SIQ and chep is the ending -jaj, which expresses “a desire or wish on the part of the speaker that something take place in the future.” Klingon has 36 verb suffixes and 26 noun suffixes that express everything from negation to causality to possession to how willing a speaker is to vouch for the accuracy of what he says. By piling on these suffixes, one after the other, you can pack a lot of meaning on to a single word in Klingon—words like nuHegh’eghrupqa’moHlaHbe’law’lI’neS, which translates roughly to: They are apparently unable to cause us to prepare to resume honorable suicide (in progress).

Such is to say, that learning Klingon is a hellacious task, but obviously success can grant some serious bragging rights.  It’s an exercise in mental agility, in other words, however, due to the paucity of true speakers, it’s a self-paced activity much like a consuming passion for crosswords or sudoku.   One does it for the pure fun of mastering a complicated system.

Obviously, an appreciation for Star Trek has to come into play as well, and this is where I honorably part ways with all students of Klingon.  While I can appreciate Star Trek to a point, I’ve never been all that into it.  It’s never held my fascination in the way that other films of similar genres have.   Ultimately, that’s why I’m confident in the assertion that I’ll never spend any time studying Klingon, but I tip my hat to those of you who make serious efforts at mastering Klingon grammar and syntax…

IT is my 1st time inthis blog.. Good to know that learning language using blog will be interestig

Hi! Does anybody here have any idea where it’s best to take cursos de inglés en extranjero? I’m making a write up about English courses and I’d like to tackle English courses abroad. I need your individual ideas, especially for those who have had experiences. Several countries that have schools offering the said areas seem to prove itself best, but I need opinions based on independent personal assessment. Thank you.