let the coal-fueled taunting begin!
Cafe Society is a better place for discussing the change in appearance of Klingons. I’d rather keep the the language question here because it may well have a factual answer.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
Oh God. Klingon speakers outnumber Navajo speakers. First the WTC bombing, now this. The world is definitely going to Hell.
What I’d like to know is where Klingon-sprach comes from IN REAL LIFE. Was it just pulled out of some TV writer’s ass, or was it a composition of other existing languages like JRR Tolkien’s novel’s languages?
It’s a real, synthetic language created for the Star Trek movies (STIII, I think)by a linguist so that it would sound “right” and completely foreign. It has its own syntax rules as well as a couple of different dialects, and the actors work pretty hard to pronounce it right, because according to them when they make a mistake it doesn’t sound as good.
So there. I don’t speak Klingon, but I have the Klingon Dictionary.
Amen. I have to put up with this when my 38-year old unmarried cousin inflicts his yearly visit on me. Then he wonders why he isn’t meeting the right women. I’m thinking that fluency in the Klingon language isn’t real high on single women’s checklists for eligible husbands.
Also I told him that, when we’re in the car, if he translates one more traffic sign or direction in Klingon, I will beat him up and leave his Trekkie carcass for the dogs.
[ul]
[li]DS9 episode: “Trials and Tribble-ations”.[/li][li]Worf (no ‘h’) was talking to O’Brien, Bashir, and Odo in the space station’s bar.[/li][li]Hi, Opal.[/li][li]Dax (woman with simbiant [snake in your parlance]) wasn’t in the scene. Besides, Dax has lived several centuries and actually knew Capt. Koloth. Dax probably knew Klingons that weren’t ridged-headed, and possibly knew why some Klingons had been both.[/li][/ul]
Hey, Caldazar, that was a pretty dang skippy WAG. Are you pretty certain of that translation?
Sure of the quote and the meanings of the basic words? Yes. Sure of the overall meaning? Nope.
The online “Klingon-English” dictionary I used can be found at:
http://www.geocities.com/duppim1/TKD.html
And heck, there’s always the possibility that the phrase doesn’t follow any convention at all and is just plain gibberish.
Thanks for the corrections and the added info. I wrote “Worf” then changed it to “Whorf” 'cos it didn’t look right! As for the symbiant, yeah, it’s a disgusting, little snake – at least in the world of “Star Gate.” 
When Marc Okrand developed the language, he incorporated the mono-syllabic grunts heard in “ST:TMP”. Gelled pretty well, too. And lengthy Klingon dialog can also be heard in ST5 & 6.
Given all this, we’re left wondering why the TV guys so often ignore established Klingon syntax, or make a half-assed attempt. We’re also left wondering why, when a starship captain asks for a translation of an alien dialect, his interpreter sees fit to say “You don’t want to know.” You don’t want to know? Sounds like CYA to me; she doesn’t know what she’s doing!
The Klingon language was based primarily on Hungarian. It’s too much work to build a whole language from scratch, and you don’t want something easily identifiable (Hey! Why are all the aliens speaking French?). Hungarian is rather an oddball among Earthling languages: There’s no known languages which appear to be closely related to it. There seem to be some vague ties to Korean, but last I heard, nobody was quite sure why or how.
I think you’ve gotten your wires crossed somewhere. Hungarian (Magyar) is, as far as I know, rather firmly established to be in the Ugric branch of the Uralic language family. Other languages in the branch include Ostyak and Vogul, and other languages in the family include Finnish, Estonian, Sami (Lappish), Karelian, and Cheremis.
Perhaps you are thinking of Basque, which indeed appears to have appeared out of nowhere. One amusing speculation I heard had it somehow related to the Na-Dene language family, some of which, if you’re wondering, are spoken in the Northwest Territories.
While we’re touching on Na-Dene, can someone confirm the truth of the “Onion” post earlier that there are now more fluent Klingon speakers than fluent Navajo speakers?
Bluepony: Right on! It kind of makes one wish they’d just used something like Navajo or Doric (~Spartan) Greek instead of the Hungarian-and-whatever goulash so that at least Trekkies would be learning something mildly useful or culturally valueable. Such a use would also tend to lead people studying “Klingon” that they do indeed need a life because it’s just a freaking television show.
What’s Klingon for “If you can understand this, you need to find a better use for your time”?
Umm, The Onion post, while I wouldn’t be surprised to find it was true, is probably not factually based. The Onion is a satire newspaper which has featured such lovely headlines as “Laura Bush noisily devours infant.” Check out http://www.theonion.com for other headlines.
FDISK