[40] in tlhIngan-Hol
Trip Report
dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (dcctdw@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Sun Feb 16 15:18:27 1992
From: krankor@IMA.ISC.COM (Captain Krankor)
To: "Klingon Languange List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 91 03:30:35 -0400
Greetings from your Grammarian. In service to the Empire, I recently went on
a trip, and gained important information about our language. Now that I am
convinced that this list is functioning properly, I shall file my report.
I went to KlinKon in Washington D.C. on Sept 6-8 for the expressed purpose of
meeting Marc Okrand, author of our dictionary. Unfortunately, I was not able
to get all my questions answered, but I did pick up some useful info.
First, let us address some of the rumours that have been floating about. Accor
ding
to Mr. Okrand:
1) If I understood what he was saying correctly, there is not going to be a new
dictionary per se; what there will be is an extension. It will not be particul
arly
lengthy, but will contain additional vocabulary and grammar. He has already
submitted it to the book folx and doesn't know when it will be out (he seemed t
o
think December, but clearly wasn't very sure). Happily, it is an extension, no
t
a revision, so everything we have in the old dictionary remains valid. He had
some of his notes and stuff there, which I was able to get an ever-so-brief loo
k
at, so I can tell you that words for "pie" and "thank" will be forthcoming, amo
ng
many others.
2) There is no news on an official pIqaD. Apparently, the guy who does the let
tering
for the movies and show (I think his name is Okuda, but I could be wrong), well
apparently Okrand and Okuda have talked about getting together and working out
a
definitive mapping, but that has yet to happen, and it didn't sound as if it we
re
likely to happen any time soon. So, for the record, when you see Klingon writi
ng
on-screen, it has no meaning whatsoever, despite the fact that apparently Okuda
does a good job of making it *look* real, by making it consistant in consistant
places and so forth.
Next, some sundry tidbits:
Here's something I'll bet you didn't know: Mr. Okrand did *not*, in fact, inve
nt
the Klingon language. He was brought in for ST:III to do the language stuff, b
ut
there had already been Klingonese in ST:I, so he started with that as his base
(which is why the Klingonese in ST:I is so recognizable). So do you know who d
id
the Klingonese for ST:I and therefore really was the inventor of the language?
Though he received no screen credits for it, it was in fact James Doohan. Yup,
another Mr. Scott miracle! {{:-) Of course, obviously Mr. Okrand did most of th
e work
in developing the language; what he inherited from Mr. Doohan consisted of abou
t
8 words.
Another tidbit: You know the worm dish that Riker ate when he served aboard th
e
Klingon vessel pagh? The one that is best served live? What is it called? To
hear the actors pronounce it, it sounds like GaH, assuming somehow that Klingon
had
a hard G sound, which of course it does not. Usually it is written as ghaH, wh
ich
seems a little odd, as ghaH is the pronoun for he/she. Well, it turns out that
this is a complete mispronounciation on the part of the actors; it was supposed
to be ghargh, which is, of course, the Klingon word for worm! I think that now
people are writing it as ghagh. In any case, the explanation is that apparentl
y
the worms take a different name when served as a dish {{:-)
Apparently that was the first episode of nextrek that used Klingon extensively,
so
he worked with them some on that. Which means that despite my earlier conclusi
ons,
that episode *does* use 'real' Klingon. I'm gonna have to go back and study it
again.
A related and somewhat disconcerting tidbit: It seems that NexTrek isn't reall
y
using the language per se. What they do when they have Klingon dialogue is try
to look it up in the dictionary; if they find words they're looking for, they u
se
them, otherwise they make things up. That is why it can be so frustrating tryi
ng
to translate what they are saying, when you can get a word or two, and then get
totally stuck on the rest.
By the way, I have heard (not from Okrand) that one such 'unofficial' word is a
curse: pataQ. This translates loosely as 'shit'. (The person who told me this
has a license plate that reads: PATAQ-BE)
I also managed to pick up some useful nuts-and-bolts grammar type stuff, which
I
will lay out in a forthcoming posting.
Captain Krankor, Grammarian
P.S. I have been hanging out at TrekMUSE (128.109.201.1 1701) while TinyTIM has
been down, so feel free to stop by if you're looking for some good tlhIngan Hol
conversation.
