Title: The Klingon Dictionary
Related web page: here
Author: Marc Okrand
Date: 1985, 1992
Publisher: Pocket Books
ISBN: 0-671-74559-X
Length: 191 pages
Quote: "When two Klingons meet...if anything of an introductory nature is said...it is an expression that can best be translated as What do you want?"
The Klingon Empire may be fiction, but the Star Trek commercial empire is a fact, and there are Trekkies out there who actually speak Klingon. According to the Washington City Paper (sorry, I don't have a link for the article), there are even Trekkies (who are gainfully employed) who've made Klingon the official house language in their homes and taught it to their children. While Marc Okrand did not construct the first language that his loyal readers actually used for coded communication with one another, and people have taught Esperanto and Interlingua to children for years, Klingon may be the first constructed language to be both used in fiction and taught to children in the real world.
I'm glad I wasn't one of those children. It's not just that Klingons have always been a fictional projection of the way U.S. citizens have seen Russians--evil in the original Star Trek sequence, more empathetically recognized as "a warrior culture" by The Next Generation--and their language was meant to reproduce what many U.S. citizens considered the unpleasant sound of Russian, with lots of harsh consonants that literally beg to be spat out. ("Speakers of English may want to exercise care to avoid discharging saliva while articulating this sound...Klingons do not worry about this.")
Whether seen as evil or merely as alien, Klingons are definitely not meant to be attractive to English-speaking Trekkies. "Food words are missing due to limited resources: there have been problems recruiting staff interested in studying Klingon eating habits." "What follows is only a sketch or outline of Klingon grammar...[that] will allow the student of Klingon to figure out what a Klingon is saying and to respond in an intelligible, though somewhat brutish, manner. Most Klingons will never know the difference." And, "Klingon poets often violate this grammatical rule in order to evoke particular moods in their poetry. Thus, forms such as tlhonmey (nostrils scattered all about) do occur."
This is not the kind of language most people my age wanted to learn.
However, the real problem is the vast number of words that have no Klingon equivalent. In the TV show Klingons are found only on military spaceships, so the Klingon language lacks words for most things found in everyday life on Earth. Phrases like "activate the transport beam" may be applied to real-world situations in an amusing way, but a language that lacks equivalents for words like hammer, wrench, kitchen sink, bathroom, letter, hedge, knitting, or be born is not likely to be useful in most households.
Saying that Klingons currently think it chic to use the English words for such things, with a heavy Klingon accent, is a cop-out...even if there are real languages, e.g. Japanese, that often do work that way.
It's worth mentioning, too, that just as everything about Klingon was designed to express a "macho warrior" worldview, there are constructed languages designed to express a "sensitive, womanly" worldview. Two of these languages, Kesh and Laadan, have been spoken in the real world...at least at science-fiction conventions, although they also seem inadequate for saying most of the things most of us would be likely to say at home. Then there's Elvish, constructed by J.R.R. Tolkien to express a worldview suitable to epic poetry, and not useful for most everyday purposes either, although some people at my school managed to use it.
Well...this writer humbly pledges, before unleashing any constructed language on the world, to construct enough of it that fans who may want to use it can get a reasonable amount of use out of it. Meanwhile, for those who are interested in the sociological phenomenon of constructed languages, here is Klingon. It's good for several hours of entertainment, anyway.
But if you want to go to all the trouble of learning a language, why not learn real Russian? Or real Arabic, which is also full of harsh consonants and capable of being spoken in a menacing tone. Or real Chinese, ditto. Not only do Russian, Arabic, and Chinese completely mystify most English-speaking people, but they also have enough words that you can say just about anything you might want to say in them. And you can say it to foreigners, in "an intelligible, though somewhat brutish, manner" that may be very welcome if they're trying to find their contact person at the airport. And, if you can demonstrate the ability to communicate with native speakers of these languages, and are otherwise employable, you can get a well-paid job.
(When this review appeared on Associated Content, about ten years ago, two memorable things happened. One: a local lurker snapped up my copy of the book during the next week. The other: an e-friend commented, "Why not learn Spanish?" North Americans, at least, are supposed to be able to avoid having to learn English, French, and Spanish as adults because we were supposed to have been at least offered a chance to learn them in school; we should be able to use them in an intelligible, though somewhat brutish, manner by now. Spanish is sometimes said to be the easiest of all languages for adult English-speakers to learn, if we do have to learn it as adults.)
Meanwhile, for Trekkies and those who buy them presents: if you buy The Klingon Dictionary here, $5 per gently used book, $5 per package, plus $1 per online payment, we send $1 to Okrand or a charity of his choice. The Klingon Dictionary and related materials may also be purchased as new publications through the official Klingon Language Institute site, which is an even better deal for Okrand and also an opportunity to mingle with other Trekkies online.
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