[1407] in tlhIngan-Hol
The history of the Klingon language
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Fri Aug 20 13:31:24 1993
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: matthew@viper.uk.tele.nokia.fi (Matthew Faupel)
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1993 17:22:12 +0100
In-Reply-To: A.APPLEYARD@fs1.mt.umist.ac.uk's message of 9 Aug 93 11:35:03 GMT
<MAILQUEUE-101.930809113503.384@fs1.metallurgy.umist.ac.uk>
I found this analysis of the pre-history of the Klingon language
interesting; it's something that I thought of too very soon after my first
encounter with tlhIngan Hol.
I noticed that many very complex and/or advanced concepts associated with a
technical (and especially space oriented) civilisation require only one or
two syllables to express, e.g. 'evnagh, begh, chach (the verb), De', DoD,
ghor, ghun, Hong, wiy and so on. I also noticed the lack of irregularities
in the forms of verbs and the formation of plurals, the relative simplicity
of phrase structure and the regularity of word formation (all syllables are
CV or CVC). Finally there is the interesting observation that *all*
Klingons (apparently) speak tlhIngan Hol.
These facts led me to think that perhaps tlhIngan Hol is a constructed
language, invented after Klingons discovered space-flight (perhaps even
because of it in order to have a common language for the navy), hence the
luxury of brief words for complex technical terms. An argument against this
is that it is not perfectly regular, but this could be for a number of
reasons; perhaps it started as a creole and so inherited some irregularities
from its parents, or perhaps in the course of it being spoken for some
hundreds of years irregularities have crept in for cultural reasons unknown
to us.
Whaddya think folks?
lIjwi'
