KLINGON LANGUAGES

About the book KLINGON LANGUAGES

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The Klingon language (tlhIngan Hol in Klingon) is the constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe. Deliberately designed by Marc Okrand to be "alien", it has a number of typologically uncommon features. The language's basic sound, along with a few words, was first devised by actor James Doohan ("Scotty") for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. That film marked the first time the language had been heard on screen; in all previous appearances, Klingons spoke in English. Klingon was subsequently developed by Okrand into a full-fledged language. Klingon is sometimes referred to as Klingonese (most notably in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Trouble With Tribbles", where it was actually pronounced by a Klingon character as ), but, among the Klingon-speaking community, this is often understood to refer to another Klingon language that is described in John M. Ford's Star Trek novels as Klingonaase. A small number of people, mostly dedicated Star Trek fans or language aficionados, can converse in Klingon. Its vocabulary, heavily centered on Star Trek-Klingon concepts such as spacecraft or warfare, can sometimes make it cumbersome for everyday use for instance, while there are words for transporter ionizer unit (jolvoy') or bridge (of a ship) (meH), there is currently no word for bridge in the sense of a crossing over water. Nonetheless, mundane conversations are common among skilled speakers. Though mentioned in the original Star Trek series, Klingon was first used on-screen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). For Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), director Leonard Nimoy and writer-producer Harve Bennett wanted the Klingons to speak a proper language instead of made-up gibberish and so commis...