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Klingon language

The Klingon language (in Klingon, tlhIngan Hol) is a constructed language created by Marc Okrand for Paramount and spoken by Klingons in the fictional Star Trek universe. He designed the language with Object Verb Subject word order to give an alien feel to the language.

A description of the Klingon language can be found in Dr. Marc Okrand's book The Klingon Dictionary (Published by Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster, 1985, second edition with new addendum 1992, ISBN 067174559X). Other notable works include The Klingon Way (with Klingon sayings and proverbs), Klingon for the Galactic Traveler and the two audio productions Conversational Klingon and Power Klingon.

Three books have also been published in the tongue: Hamlet, ghIlghameS (Gilgamesh) and paghmo' tIn mIS (Much Ado About Nothing).

Some Trekkers take the time to learn it and at some Star Trek conventions you can hear enthusiasts use it amongst themselves. They often greet each other with the Klingon word "nuqneH" (literally: "What do you want?"), which is said to be the closest thing to a greeting that exists in the language.

There was an attempt by a man to raise a child bilingually in English and Klingon; it was decided that the father would speak in Klingon and the mother would speak in English. A few years into its life, the child began rejecting Klingon and gravitating towards English. Klingon had lacked any words for things that were important in a baby's life, such as "diaper" and "pacifier". At the time, it even lacked words for many objects common around the house, such as "table".

In May 2003, the Multnomah County, Oregon Department of Human Services named Klingon on a list of 55 languages for which it might conceivably need interpreters; this story was circulated out-of-context as an urban legend claiming that the department was looking to hire a Klingon interpreter. County chair Diane Lin called the listing the "result of an overzealous attempt to ensure that our safety net systems can respond to all customers and clients." [1]

Paramount owns a copyright to the official dictionary and other canonical descriptions of the language. Some people dispute the validity of Paramount's claim of copyright on the language itself in light of the Feist v. Rural decision, but no challenge has actually been brought to court.

A programming language called Var'aq was inspired by Klingon.

SAMPA representation

This is a tentative list of the SAMPA and IPA transcription of the Klingon phonemes as listed in Okrand's book. <Angle brackets> represent orthography whereas /slashes/ represent phonemes in SAMPA and [square brackets] phonetic transcription in IPA.

Consonants:

<b> /b/ ~ [b]
<ch> /t_S/ ~ [ʧ]
<D> /d`/ ~ [ɖ]
<gh> /G/ [γ]
<H> /x/ ~ [x]
<j> /d_Z/ ~ [ʤ]
<l> /l/ ~ [l]
<m> /m/ ~ [m]
<n> /n/ ~ [n]
<ng> /N/ ~ [ŋ]
<p> /p_h/ [pʰ]
<q> /q_h/ ~ [qʰ]
<Q> /q_X/ ~ [q͡χ]
<r> /r/ (note that this is trilled) ~ [r]
<S> /s`/ ~ [ʂ]
<t> /t_h/ ~ [tʰ]
<tlh> /t_K/ ~ [t͡ɬ]
<v> /v/ ~ [v]
<w> /w/ ~ [w]
<y> /j/ ~ [j]
<'> /?/ ~ [ʔ]

Vowels:

<a> /A/ ~ [ɑ]
<e> /E/ ~ [ɛ]
<I> /I/ ~ [ɪ]
<o> /o/ ~ [o]
<u> /u/ ~ [u]
<aw> /Aw/ ~ [ɑu]
<ay> /Aj/ ~ [ɑj]
<ew> /Ew/ ~ [ɛu]
<ey> /Ej/ ~ [ɛi]
<Iw> /Iw/ ~ [ɪu]
<Iy> /i/ ~ [i]
<oy> /oj/ ~ [oi]
<uy> /uj/ ~ [ui]

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Klingon language".