The
Klingon language
(Klingon:
tlhIngan Hol
,
pIqaD
:
????? ???
,
pronounced
[?t???.ŋ?n
xol]
) is the
constructed language
spoken by a fictional alien race called the
Klingons
, in the
Star Trek
universe.
Klingon
|
---|
|
Pronunciation
| [?t???.ŋ?n
xol]
|
---|
Created?by
| Marc Okrand
,
James Doohan
,
Jon Povill
|
---|
Setting and usage
| Star Trek
films and television series (
TNG
,
DS9
,
Voyager
,
Enterprise
, and
Discovery
), the opera
?u?
, the play
A Klingon Christmas Carol
, and
The Big Bang Theory
|
---|
Users
| (Around a dozen fluent speakers cited 1996)
[1]
|
---|
Purpose
| |
---|
| Latin script
(
Klingon alphabet
)
Klingon script
|
---|
Sources
| Constructed languages
A priori languages
|
---|
|
Regulated?by
| Marc Okrand
|
---|
|
ISO 639-2
| tlh
|
---|
ISO 639-3
| tlh
|
---|
Glottolog
| klin1234
|
---|
This article contains
IPA
phonetic symbols.
Without proper
rendering support
, you may see
question marks, boxes, or other symbols
instead of
Unicode
characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see
Help:IPA
.
|
Described in the 1985 book
The Klingon Dictionary
by
Marc Okrand
and deliberately designed to sound "alien", it has a number of
typologically
uncommon features. The language's basic sound, along with a few words, was devised by actor
James Doohan
("
Scotty
") and producer
Jon Povill
for
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
. That film marked the first time the language had been heard. In all previous appearances, Klingons spoke in English, even to each other. 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 "Klingonee"
), but among the Klingon-speaking community, this is often understood
[
citation needed
]
to refer to another Klingon language called
Klingonaase
that was introduced in
John M. Ford
's 1984
Star Trek
novel
The Final Reflection
,
and appears in other
Star Trek
novels by Ford.
[2]
The play
A Klingon Christmas Carol
is the first production that is primarily in Klingon (only the narrator speaks English). The opera
?u?
is entirely in Klingon.
A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon. Because its vocabulary is heavily centered on
Star Trek
-Klingon concepts such as
spacecraft
or
warfare
, it can be hard for everyday use because of the lack of words for a casual conversation.
The language is first mentioned in the original
Star Trek
series episode "
The Trouble with Tribbles
" (1967), but is not heard until
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
(
1979
). According to the actor who spoke the lines,
Mark Lenard
, James Doohan recorded the lines he had written on a tape, and Lenard transcribed the recorded lines in a way he found useful in learning them.
[3]
For
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
(
1984
), director
Leonard Nimoy
and writer-producer
Harve Bennett
wanted the Klingons to speak a structured language instead of random
gibberish
, and so commissioned a full language, based on the phrases Doohan had originated, from Marc Okrand, who had earlier constructed four lines of
Vulcan
dialogue for
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
.
[3]
[4]
:?266?267?
Okrand enlarged the lexicon and developed a grammar based on Doohan's original dozen words. The language appeared intermittently in later films featuring the original cast; for example, in
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
(
1989
) and in
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
(
1991
), where
translation
difficulties served as a
plot device
.
[5]
Two "non-canon" dialects of Klingon are hinted at in the novelization of
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
, as
Saavik
speaks in Klingon to the only Klingon officer aboard Cpt. Kruge's starship after his death, as the survivors of the
Enterprise
's self-destruction transport up from the crumbling Genesis Planet to the Klingon ship. The surviving officer,
Maltz
, states that he speaks the
Rumaiy
dialect, while Saavik is speaking to him in the
Kumburan
dialect of Klingon, per Maltz's spoken reply to her.
[6]
With the advent of the series
Star Trek: The Next Generation
(1987)?in which one of the main characters,
Worf
, was a Klingon?and successors, the language and various cultural aspects for the fictional species were expanded. In the episode "
A Matter of Honor
", several members of a Klingon ship's crew speak a language that is not translated for the benefit of the viewer (even Commander Riker, enjoying the benefits of a
universal translator
, is unable to understand) until one Klingon orders the others to "speak their [i.e., human] language".
[7]
A small number of non-Klingon characters were later depicted in
Star Trek
as having learned to speak Klingon, notably
Jean-Luc Picard
and
Dax
.
[7]
Hobbyists around the world have studied the Klingon language. At least nine Klingon translations of works of world literature have been published, among which are:
Hamlet
(
Hamlet
),
ghIlghameS
(
The
Epic of Gilgamesh
),
paghmo? tIn mIS
(
Much Ado About Nothing
)
,
pIn?a? qan paQDI?norgh
(
Tao Te Ching
),
Sun pIn?a? veS mIw
(
The Art of War
),
chIjwI' tIQ bom
(
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
),
'aS 'IDnar pIn'a' Dun
(
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
),
ta?puq mach
(
The Little Prince
), and
QelIS boqHarmey
(
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
). The Shakespearean choices were inspired by a remark from High Chancellor
Gorkon
in
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
, who said, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon." In the bonus material on the DVD, screenwriter
Nicholas Meyer
and actor
William Shatner
both explain that this was an allusion to the German myth that Shakespeare was in fact German.
The
Klingon Language Institute
exists to promote the language.
[8]
CBS Studios
owns the
copyright
on the official
dictionary
and other
canonical
descriptions of the language. While constructed languages ("conlangs") are viewed as creations with copyright protection,
[9]
natural languages are not protected, excluding dictionaries and other works created with them. Mizuki Miyashita and Laura Moll note, "Copyrights on dictionaries are unusual because the entries in the dictionary are not copyrightable as the words themselves are facts, and facts can not be copyrighted. However, the formatting, example sentences, and instructions for dictionary use are created by the author, so they are copyrightable."
[10]
Okrand had studied some
Native American
and
Southeast Asian languages
,
[11]
[12]
and phonological and grammatical features of these languages "worked their way into Klingon, but for the most part, not by design."
[3]
Okrand himself has stated that a design principle of the Klingon language was dissimilarity to existing natural languages in general, and English in particular. He therefore avoided patterns that are
typologically
common and deliberately chose features that occur relatively infrequently in human languages. This includes above all the highly asymmetric consonant inventory and the basic
word order
.
[13]
A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon.
Arika Okrent
guessed in her 2009 book
In the Land of Invented Languages
that there might be 20?30 fluent speakers.
[14]
Since that time, with the appearance of
Duolingo's
Klingon course and the increasing popularity of video chat platforms such as
Zoom
and
Discord
, the number of conversationally fluent speakers has definitely increased; in 2021, there are perhaps 50-60. 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 words for
transporter ionizer unit
(
jolvoy?
) or
bridge
(of a ship) (
meH
) have been known since close to the language's inception, the word for
bridge
in the sense of a crossing over water (
QI
) was unknown until August 2012.
[15]
Nonetheless, mundane conversations are possible among skilled speakers.
[16]
One Klingon speaker,
d'Armond Speers
, raised his son Alec to speak Klingon as a first language, whilst the boy's mother communicated with him in English.
[17]
Alec rarely responded to his father in Klingon, although when he did, his pronunciation was "excellent". After Alec's fifth birthday, Speers reported that his son eventually stopped responding to him when spoken to in Klingon as he clearly did not enjoy it, so Speers switched to English.
[18]
[19]
In 2007, a report surfaced that
Multnomah County, Oregon
, was hiring Klingon translators for its mental health program in case patients came into a psychiatric hospital speaking nothing but Klingon.
[20]
Most circulations of the report seemingly implied that this was a problem that health officials faced before; however, the original report indicated that this was just a precaution for a hypothetical and that said translator would only be paid on an as needed basis.
[20]
After the report was misinterpreted, the County issued another release noting that releasing the original report was a "mistake".
[20]
In May 2009,
Simon & Schuster
, in collaboration with
Ultralingua
Inc., a developer of electronic dictionary applications, announced the release of a suite of electronic Klingon language software for most computer platforms including a dictionary, a phrasebook, and an audio learning tool.
[21]
In September 2011,
Eurotalk
released the "Learn Klingon" course in its
Talk Now!
series. The language is displayed in both Latin and pIqaD fonts, making this the first language course written in pIqaD and approved by CBS and
Marc Okrand
. It was translated by Jonathan Brown and Okrand and uses the
Hol-pIqaD
TrueType
font.
[22]
In August 2016, a company in the United Kingdom, Bidvine, began offering Klingon lessons as one of their services.
[23]
In March 2018, the popular language learning site
Duolingo
opened a beta course in Klingon. After it proved its effectiveness, the company offered to promote it from beta status, but due to ongoing software issues regarding Klingon's unexpected use of upper- and lower-case letters and the apostrophe as a consonant instead of punctuation, the course developers chose not to accept the offer until the problems were addressed.
[24]
There are Klingon language meetings
[25]
[26]
and linguists or students are interested in researching this topic, even writing essays about the language or its users.
Klingon speakers are also referred to in non-
Star Trek
TV series, including
Frasier
,
The Big Bang Theory
, and
Lucifer
, and were heavily featured in the "
My Big Fat Geek Wedding
" episode of
The Simpsons
. In the 2017 film
Please Stand By
, in which a young autistic woman played by
Dakota Fanning
leaves her group home in
San Francisco
to deliver a
Star Trek
screenplay she wrote to
Paramount Pictures
, a
Los Angeles police officer
played by
Patton Oswalt
coaxes her out of hiding by speaking with her in Klingon.
Previous Wikipedia logo with Klingon
/r/
character (
) at upper right (2003?2010)
In the
Quentin Tarantino
film
Kill Bill Volume 1
(2003), the opening of the film cites 'Revenge is a dish best served cold' as an 'old Klingon proverb'.
[29]
In 2010, a Chicago Theatre company presented a version of
Charles Dickens
'
A Christmas Carol
in Klingon language and a Klingon setting.
[30]
On September 25, 2010, the
Washington Shakespeare Company
(now known as
WSC Avant Bard
) performed selections from
Hamlet
and
Much Ado About Nothing
in the Klingon language in
Arlington County, Virginia
. The performance was proposed by Okrand in his capacity as chairman of the group's board.
[31]
This performance was reprised on February 27, 2011 featuring
Stephen Fry
as the Klingon
Osric
and was filmed by the
BBC
as part of a 5-part documentary on language entitled
Fry's Planet Word
.
[18]
The Java edition of
Minecraft
[32]
has a Klingon language setting.
The 2003?2010 version of the
puzzle globe
logo of
Wikipedia
, representing its multilingualism, contained a Klingon character. When updated in 2010, the Klingon character was removed from the logo, and substituted with one from the
Ge'ez script
.
[33]
A
Klingon language Wikipedia
was started in June 2004 at
tlh.wikipedia.org
. It was permanently locked in August 2005 and moved to
Wikia
.
[34]
[35]
The Klingon
Wiktionary
was closed in 2008.
[36]
The file management software
XYplorer
has been translated into Klingon by its developer.
[37]
Microsoft's
Bing Translator
attempts to translate Klingon from and to other languages.
[38]
[39]
It can do a good job with individual words, and with phrases included in its training corpus, but it is not well tuned for Klingon's system of
prefixes
and
suffixes
. For example,
DaHaDnIS
"You must study it" is rendered instead as "They Must Study."
With the digital-only release of
Star Trek: Discovery
in 2017, streaming service
Netflix
announced it would provide Klingon subtitles for the entire first season,
[40]
translated by Klingon language expert
Lieven L. Litaer
.
[41]
They can be enabled like any other language provided by the streaming service, and are shown using romanized transliteration rather than Klingon script.
In 2017, a version of “
The Gummy Bear Song
” was uploaded to
YouTube
, fully translated to the Klingon language. Its title, “
ngalbogh mIl'oD jIH
”, translates to
English
as “I am a sabre bear that is chewy.” The version was released to
iTunes
in 2018.
[
citation needed
]
In 2020 the German artist Hans Solo (
Ai-Tiem
) released an
EP
NuqneH
, whose 5 tracks are completely rapped in Klingon language.
[42]
Language learning sources
edit
- Duolingo
features a course for Klingon, which was released on March 15, 2018 and is now in beta testing.
[24]
[43]
[44]
- The
Klingon Language Institute
provides a Learn Klingon Online series of lessons to its members. The first few lessons are free to sample.
- Memrise
has user-created materials on various topics.
[45]
An important concept to spoken and written Klingon is
canonicity
. Only words and grammatical forms introduced by Marc Okrand are considered canonical Klingon by the KLI and most Klingonists.
[46]
However, as the growing number of speakers employ different strategies to express themselves, it is often unclear as to what level of
neologism
is permissible.
[47]
New vocabulary has been collected in a list maintained by the KLI until 2005
[48]
and has since then been followed up by Klingon expert
Lieven Litaer
until the KLI's website was renewed in 2015.
[49]
Within the fictional universe of
Star Trek
, Klingon is derived from the original language spoken by the messianic figure
Kahless the Unforgettable
, who united the Klingon home-world of
Qo?noS
under one empire more than 1500 years ago.
[50]
Many dialects exist, but the standardized dialect of prestige is almost invariably that of the sitting emperor.
Latin transcription
|
Klingon script
|
IPA
|
a
|
|
/
?
/
|
b
|
|
/
b
/
|
ch
|
|
/
t??
/
|
D
|
|
/
?
/
|
e
|
|
/
?
/
|
gh
|
|
/
?
/
|
H
|
|
/
x
/
|
I
|
|
/
?
/
|
j
|
|
/
d??
/
|
l
|
|
/
l
/
|
m
|
|
/
m
/
|
n
|
|
/
n
/
|
ng
|
|
/
ŋ
/
|
o
|
|
/
o
/
|
p
|
|
/
p
?
/
|
q
|
|
/
q
?
/
|
Q
|
|
/
q?χ
/
|
r
|
|
/
r
/
|
S
|
|
/
?
/
|
t
|
|
/
t
?
/
|
tlh
|
|
/
t??
/
|
u
|
|
/
u
/
|
v
|
|
/
v
/
|
w
|
|
/
w
/
|
y
|
|
/
j
/
|
?
|
|
/
?
/
|
Klingon has been developed with a
phonology
that, while based on human
natural languages
, is intended to sound
alien
to human ears. When initially developed, Paramount Pictures (owners of the
Star Trek
franchise
) wanted the Klingon language to be guttural and harsh and Okrand wanted it to be unusual, so he selected
sounds
that combined in ways not generally found in other languages. The effect is mainly achieved by the use of a number of
retroflex
and
uvular
consonants in the language's inventory.
[51]
Klingon has twenty-one consonants and five vowels. Klingon is normally written in a variant of the
Latin alphabet
. The orthography of this
transliteration
is
case-sensitive
, that is,
upper
and
lower case
letters are not interchangeable (uppercase letters mostly represent sounds different from those expected by English speakers), although with the exception of Q/q there are no
minimal pairs
between case. In other words, while
hol
is incorrect Klingon, it cannot be misread as anything but an erroneous form of
Hol
(which means
language
); on the other hand,
Qat
and
qat
are two different words, the first meaning
be popular
and the second meaning
accompany
. In the discussion below, standard Klingon orthography appears in
?angle brackets?
, and the
phonemic transcription
in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
is written between
/slashes/
.
The inventory of consonants in Klingon is spread over a number of
places of articulation
. In spite of this, the inventory has many gaps: Klingon has no
velar plosives
, and only one
sibilant fricative
. Deliberately, this arrangement is very different from that of most human languages. The combination of an aspirated
voiceless alveolar plosive
/t?/
and a
voiced retroflex plosive
/?/
is particularly unusual.
There are a few dialectal pronunciation differences
[50]
(it is not known if the aforementioned non-canon
Kumburan
or
Rumaiy
dialects of
tlhIngan Hol
hinted at in the novelization of
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
might differ):
- In the Krotmag dialect
/b/
and
/?/
are realized as nasal stops
[
m
]
and
[
?
]
- In the Tak'ev dialect
/b/
and
/?/
are pre-nasalized oral stops
[mb]
and
[??]
In the Morskan dialect:
- /
t??
/
is a central affricate
[
t?s
]
- /x/
is realized as glottal
[
h
]
syllable-initially and deleted syllable-finally
- /
q?χ
/
is realized as a velar fricative
[
x
]
In contrast to its consonants, Klingon's inventory of vowels is simple, and similar to those of many human languages, such as
Spanish
or
Japanese
. There are five vowels spaced more or less evenly around the vowel space, with two back rounded vowels, one back unrounded vowel, and two front or near-front unrounded vowels. The vowel inventory is asymmetrical in that the back rounded vowels are tense and the front vowels are lax.
The two front vowels,
?
e
?
and
?
I
?
, represent sounds that are found in
English
, but are more open and lax than a typical English speaker might assume when reading Klingon text written in the Latin alphabet, thus causing the consonants of a word to be more prominent. This enhances the sense that Klingon is a clipped and harsh-sounding language.
- Vowels
- ?
a
?
??
/
?
/
??
open back unrounded vowel
(in English
sp
a
)
- ?
e
?
??
/
?
/
??
open-mid front unrounded vowel
(in English
b
e
d
)
- ?
I
?
??
/
?
/
??
near-close near-front unrounded vowel
(in English
b
i
t
)
- ?
o
?
??
/
o
/
??
close-mid back rounded vowel
(in
French
eau
and English
sn
o
w
)
- ?
u
?
??
/
u
/
??
close back rounded vowel
(in Spanish
tu
and English
yo
u
)
Diphthongs
can be analyzed phonetically as the combination of the five vowels plus one of the two
semivowels
/w/
and
/j/
(represented by
?
w
?
and
?
y
?
, respectively). Thus, the combinations
?
ay
?
,
?
ey
?
,
?
Iy
?
,
?
oy
?
,
?
uy
?
,
?
aw
?
,
?
ew
?
and
?
Iw
?
are possible. There are no words in the Klingon language that contain *
?
ow
?
or *
?
uw
?
.
Klingon follows a strict
syllable
structure. A syllable must start with a consonant (including the glottal stop) followed by one vowel. In prefixes and rare other syllables, this is enough. More commonly, this consonant-vowel pair is followed by one consonant or one of three biconsonantal
codas
: /-
w?
?-
y?
?-
rgh
/. Thus,
ta
"record",
tar
"poison" and
targh
"targ" (a type of animal) are all legal syllable forms, but *
tarD
and *
ar
are not. Despite this, one suffix takes the shape vowel+consonant: the endearment suffix
-
oy
.
In
verbs
, the stressed syllable is usually the verbal stem itself, as opposed to a prefix or any suffixes, except when a suffix ending with
???
is separated from the verb by at least one other suffix, in which case the suffix ending in
???
is also stressed. In addition, stress may shift to a suffix that is meant to be emphasized.
In
nouns
, the final syllable of the stem (the noun itself, excluding any affixes) is stressed. If any syllables ending in
???
are present, the stress shifts to those syllables.
The stress in other words seems to be variable, but this is not a serious issue because most of these words are only one syllable in length. There are some words which should fall under the rules above, but do not, although using the standard rules would still be acceptable.
Klingon is an
agglutinative
language, using mainly affixes in order to alter the function or meaning of words. Some nouns have inherently plural forms, such as
jengva?
"plate" (vs.
ngop
"plates"), but most nouns require a suffix to express plurality explicitly. Depending on the type of noun (body part, being capable of using language, or neither) the suffix changes. For beings capable of using language, the suffix is
-pu?
,
as in
tlhInganpu?
,
meaning "
Klingons
," or
jaghpu?
,
meaning "enemies". For body parts, the plural suffix is
-Du?
,
as in
mInDu?
,
"eyes". For items that are neither body parts nor capable of speech, the suffix is
-mey
,
such as in
Hovmey
("stars"), or
targhmey
("targs") for a Klingon animal somewhat resembling a boar. (However, a plural suffix is never obligatory. To say "The stars are beautiful",
?IH Hovmey
and
?IH Hov
are equally grammatical, although the second can also mean "The star is beautiful".)
The words
loD
and
be?
, which on their own mean "man" and "woman" respectively, can be used in compound words to refer to the referent's sex. For example, from
puq
("child") this process derives
puqloD
("son") and
puqbe?
("daughter").
Klingon
nouns
take suffixes to indicate
grammatical number
. There are three
noun classes
, two levels of
deixis
, and a possession and syntactic function. In all, twenty-nine noun suffixes from five classes may be employed:
jupoypu?na?wI?vaD
"for my beloved true friends". A word may carry no more than one suffix from each class, and the classes have a specific order of appearance.
Verbs
in Klingon take a prefix indicating the number and person of the subject and object, whereas suffixes are taken from nine ordered classes and a special suffix class called rovers. Each of the four known rovers has a unique rule controlling its position among the suffixes in the verb. Verbs are marked for
aspect
, certainty, predisposition and volition, dynamic,
causative
,
mood
,
negation
, and
honorific
. The Klingon verb has two moods:
indicative
and
imperative
.
The most common
word order
in Klingon is
object?verb?subject
, and, in most cases, the word order is the exact reverse of English for an equivalent sentence:
mojaq-mey-vam
suffix-
PL
-
DEM
DI-vuS-nIS-be?
1PL
.
A
.
3PL
.
P
-limit-need-
NEG
vI-Har
1SG
.
A
.
3SG
.
P
-believe
DaH mojaq-mey-vam DI-vuS-nIS-be? ?e? vI-Har
now suffix-PL-DEM 1PL.A.3PL.P-limit-need-NEG that 1SG.A.3SG.P-believe
"I believe that we do not need to limit these suffixes now."
(Hyphens are used in the above only to illustrate the use of affixes. Hyphens are not used in Klingon.)
An important aspect of Klingon grammar is its "ungrammaticality". As with for example
Japanese
, shortening of communicative statements is common, and is called "Clipped Klingon" (
tlhIngan Hol poD
or, more simply,
Hol poD
) and Ritualized Speech.
[
clarification needed
]
Clipped Klingon is especially useful in situations where speed is a decisive factor. Grammar is abbreviated, and sentence parts deemed to be superfluous are dropped. Intentional ungrammaticality is widespread, and it takes many forms. It is exemplified by the practice of
pabHa?
, which Marc Okrand translates as "to misfollow the rules" or "to follow the rules wrongly".
[50]
Qapla?
(success)
When written in the Latin alphabet, Klingon is unusual in being
case-sensitive
, with some letters written in capitals and others in lowercase. In one contrast,
q
and
Q
, there is an actual case-sensitive pair representing two different consonants. Capitals are generally reserved for uvular or retroflex consonants pronounced further back in the mouth or throat than is normal for the corresponding English sounds, as with
D
,
Q
, and
S
. However,
H
, pronounced like the
?ch?
in German "ach" or Scottish "loch", is further forward in the throat than English /h/. One phoneme, the vowel
I
, is written capital to look more like the IPA symbol for the sound /?/, and can pose problems when writing Klingon in sans-serif fonts such as
Arial
, as it looks almost the same as the consonant
l
.
This has led some Klingon enthusiasts to write it lowercase like the other vowels ("i") to prevent confusion, but this use is non-canonical. Instead, a serif font that clearly distinguishes "
I
" and "
l
", such as
Courier
or
Courier New
, has traditionally been employed for writing Klingon in the Latin alphabet. In any case, it can be disambiguated through context, as
I
never occurs next to another vowel, while
l
always does. The apostrophe, denoting the
glottal stop
, is considered a letter, not a punctuation mark, as with a
Hawaiian
'okina.
- a b ch D e gh H I j l m n ng o p q Q r S t tlh u v w y ?
Klingon is often written in (
in-universe
, "transliterated to") the
Latin alphabet
as used above, but on the television series, the Klingons use their own alien writing system. In
The Klingon Dictionary
, this alphabet is named as
pIqaD
, but no information is given about it. When Klingon symbols are used in
Star Trek
productions, they are merely decorative graphic elements, designed to emulate real
writing
and create an appropriate atmosphere. Enthusiasts have settled on the name
pIqaD
for this writing system.
The Astra Image Corporation designed the symbols currently used to "write" Klingon for
Star Trek: The Motion Picture
, although these symbols are often incorrectly attributed to
Michael Okuda
.
[b]
They based the letters on the
Klingon battlecruiser
hull markings (three letters) first created by
Matt Jefferies
and on
Tibetan writing
because the script has sharp letter forms?used as a testament to the Klingons' love for knives and blades.
For
April Fools' Day
in 2013,
Nokia
and typography company
Dalton Maag
claimed to have used "communication devices to far-flung star systems"
[52]
to assist them in localizing the
Nokia Pure
font to the Klingon writing system. Though the explanation was of course humorous in nature, as part of the
practical joke
a series of real fonts based upon the most commonly used
pIqaD
character mapping were in fact developed, and have been made available for free download.
[52]
A design principle of the Klingon language is the great degree of lexical-cultural correlation in the vocabulary. For example, there are several words meaning "to fight" or "to clash against", each having a different degree of intensity. There is an abundance of words relating to warfare and weaponry and also a great variety of curses (cursing is considered a fine art in Klingon culture). This helps lend a particular character to the language.
There are many in-jokes built into the language.
[53]
For example, the word for "pair" is
chang?eng
, a reference to the original "
Siamese twins
"
Chang and Eng Bunker
; a
leSpal
is a mid-size stringed instrument, comparable to a
guitar
(i.e.
Les Paul
);
[4]
a "chronometer" is
tlhaq
(pronounced similar to "clock"); the word for "torture" is
joy
; "
hangover
" is
?uH
, and the word for "fish" is
ghotI?
.
[4]
Sources for the vocabulary include English (albeit heavily disguised), and also
Yiddish
:
Sa?Hut
for "buttocks" (from
????
tuches
spelled backwards),
[4]
and
?oy?
for "ache, pain, sore" (cf.
oy vey
).
[54]
Many English words do not have direct translations into Klingon. To express "hello", the nearest equivalent is
nuqneH
, meaning "What do you want?",
[4]
with "goodbye" translated as
Qapla'
, "Success!".
- tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh?a??
- Do you speak Klingon?
- jIyajbe?.
- I don't understand.
- Dochvetlh vISoplaHbe?.
- I can't eat that thing.
- bIlughbe?.
- You are wrong.
- bortaS bIr jablu?DI? reH QaQqu? nay?.
- Revenge is a dish best served cold
. (lit: When cold revenge is served, the dish is always very good)
- Heghlu?meH QaQ jajvam.
- Today is a good day to die
.
- ^
Literally, it reads "Answers[sic] minister and due of course. But regarding behaviour, [military] station devolved occurs."
- ^
>See:
- Symbols attributed to Okuda: the Klingon Language Institute's
Klingon FAQ
(edited by
d'Armond Speers
),
question 2.13
by Will Martin (August 18, 1994).
- Symbols
incorrectly
attributed to Okuda: KLI founder Lawrence M. Schoen's
"On Orthography" (PDF)
, citing J. Lee's "An Interview with Michael Okuda" in the KLI's journal
HolQeD
1.1 (March 1992), p. 11.
- Symbols actually designed by Astra Image Corporation: Michael Everson's
Proposal...
[3]
- ^
According to
Lawrence Schoen
, director of the
KLI
.
Wired 4.08: Dejpu'bogh Hov rur qablli!*
Archived
2013-05-12 at the
Wayback Machine
- ^
Ford, John M. (1999).
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a
b
c
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ISBN
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a
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(2009).
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- ^
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San Juan Bautista
, California State Historic Park, which includes a short mention of the local
Mutsun
native people whom Okrand studied for his thesis.
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tlhIngan Hol yejHaD qep?a?
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rap-EP by Hans Solo"
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