[1203] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: House languages
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Tue Jul 6 13:24:17 1993
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Carl Hostetter <carl@class.gsfc.nasa.gov>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 93 10:51:56 EDT
In-Reply-To: <9307050647.AA01494@cs.ust.hk>; from "scott@cs.ust.hk" at Jul 5, 9
3 2:47 pm
> - Imaginary languages like Quenya and Klingon, invented by somebody to
> lend verisimitude to a (usually alien) culture and people.
Actually, Tolkien created cultures and peoples to lend verisimiltude
to his languages.
> - Quenya. Certainly sufficiently "foreign". The major problem is
> that it's no less complex linguistically than other (?) natural
> languages. It'd be hard to learn -- I can't imagine getting to the
> point where I could converse with my 10 year old in it.
>
> - Klingon. To some extent, the same problems as with Quenya. The
> difference is that, mind-boggling though it might seem, there is
> actually a Klingon Language Camp. It also has a non-latin script
> and a standard latin transcription (Okrand's, from his Klingon
> Dictionary). The major problems are that the existing vocabularly
> is pretty tiny, and that it was *designed* to be a very harsh
> sounding language. I'm not sure that I want to draw *that* much
> attention when speaking it.
>
The main difference I see between Quenya and Klingon is that there is
a mass of diachronic phonological development that has to be dealt
with, whereas Klingon is agglutinative with (so far as I know) no
phonological interaction across morpheme boundaries. It is much
easier to construct a Klingon word that it is to construct a
Quenya word.
Carl F. Hostetter
carl@class.gsfc.nasa.gov
