| Klingon | |
| Status: | VU |
| Nativename: | |
| Pronunciation: | pronounced as /tlh/ |
| Speakers: | Around a dozen fluent speakers |
| Date: | 1996 |
| Ref: | [1] |
| Fam1: | Constructed languages |
| Fam2: | Artistic languages |
| Fam3: | Fictional languages |
| Creator: | Marc Okrand, James Doohan, Jon Povill |
| Setting: | Star Trek films and television series (TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, and Discovery), the opera , the play A Klingon Christmas Carol, and The Big Bang Theory |
| Posteriori: | Constructed languages A priori languages |
| Script: | Latin script (Klingon alphabet) Klingon script |
| Agency: | Marc Okrand |
| Iso2: | tlh |
| Iso3: | tlh |
| Notice: | IPA |
| Glotto: | klin1234 |
| Glottorefname: | Klingon |
The Klingon language (Klingon; tlhIngan-Hol: tlhIngan Hol|links=no, :
Klingon; tlhIngan-Hol: {{PUA| , pronounced as /tlh/) is the constructed language spoken by a fictional alien race called the Klingons in the Star Trek universe.Described in the 1985 book The Klingon Dictionary by Marc Okrand and deliberately designed to sound "alien", it has a number of typologically uncommon features. The language's basic sound, along with a few words, was devised by actor James Doohan ("Scotty") and producer Jon Povill for . The film marked the first time the language had been heard. In all previous appearances, Klingons spoke in English, even to each other. Klingon was subsequently developed by Okrand into a full-fledged language.
Klingon is sometimes referred to as Klingonese (most notably in the episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", where it was actually pronounced by a Klingon character as "Klingonee"), but among the Klingon-speaking community, this is often understood to refer to another Klingon language called Klingonaase that was introduced in John M. Ford's 1984 Star Trek novel The Final Reflection, and appears in other Star Trek novels by Ford.[2]
The play A Klingon Christmas Carol is the first production that is primarily in Klingon (only the narrator speaks English). The opera is entirely in Klingon.
A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon. Because its vocabulary is heavily centered on Star Trek-Klingon concepts such as spacecraft or warfare, it can be hard for everyday use because of the lack of words for a casual conversation.
The language is first mentioned in the original Star Trek series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" (1967), but is not heard until (1979). According to the actor who spoke the lines, Mark Lenard, James Doohan recorded the lines he had written on a tape, and Lenard transcribed the recorded lines in a way he found useful in learning them.[3]
For (1984), director Leonard Nimoy and writer-producer Harve Bennett wanted the Klingons to speak a structured language instead of random gibberish, and so commissioned a full language, based on the phrases Doohan had originated, from Marc Okrand, who had earlier constructed four lines of Vulcan dialogue for .[4]
Okrand enlarged the lexicon and developed a grammar based on Doohan's original dozen words. The language appeared intermittently in later films featuring the original cast; for example, in (1989) and in (1991), where translation difficulties served as a plot device.[5]
Two "non-canon" dialects of Klingon are hinted at in the novelization of , as Saavik speaks in Klingon to the only Klingon officer aboard Cpt. Kruge's starship after his death, as the survivors of the Enterprise's self-destruction transport up from the crumbling Genesis Planet to the Klingon ship. The surviving officer, Maltz, states that he speaks the Rumaiy dialect, while Saavik is speaking to him in the Kumburan dialect of Klingon, per Maltz's spoken reply to her.[6]
With the advent of the series (1987)—in which one of the main characters, Worf, was a Klingon—and successors, the language and various cultural aspects for the fictional species were expanded. In the episode "A Matter of Honor", several members of a Klingon ship's crew speak a language that is not translated for the benefit of the viewer (even Commander Riker, enjoying the benefits of a universal translator, is unable to understand) until one Klingon orders the others to "speak their [i.e., human] language".[7]
A small number of non-Klingon characters were later depicted in Star Trek as having learned to speak Klingon, notably Jean-Luc Picard and Dax.
Hobbyists around the world have studied the Klingon language. At least nine Klingon translations of works of world literature have been published, among which are: (Hamlet), (The Epic of Gilgamesh), (Much Ado About Nothing), (Tao Te Ching), (The Art of War), (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner), (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), (The Little Prince), and (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland). The Shakespearean choices were inspired by a remark from High Chancellor Gorkon in , who said, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon." In the bonus material on the DVD, screenwriter Nicholas Meyer and actor William Shatner both explain that this was an allusion to the German myth that Shakespeare was in fact German.
The Klingon Language Institute exists to promote the language.[8]
CBS Studios owns the copyright on the official dictionary and other canonical descriptions of the language. While constructed languages ("conlangs") are viewed as creations with copyright protection,[9] natural languages are not protected, excluding dictionaries and other works created with them. Mizuki Miyashita and Laura Moll note, "Copyrights on dictionaries are unusual because the entries in the dictionary are not copyrightable as the words themselves are facts, and facts can not be copyrighted. However, the formatting, example sentences, and instructions for dictionary use are created by the author, so they are copyrightable."[10]
Okrand had studied some Native American and Southeast Asian languages,[11] [12] and phonological and grammatical features of these languages "worked their way into Klingon, but for the most part, not by design."[3] Okrand himself has stated that a design principle of the Klingon language was dissimilarity to existing natural languages in general, and English in particular. He therefore avoided patterns that are typologically common and deliberately chose features that occur relatively infrequently in human languages. This includes above all the highly asymmetric consonant inventory and the basic word order.[13]
A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon. Arika Okrent guessed in her 2009 book In the Land of Invented Languages that there might be 20–30 fluent speakers.[14] Since that time, with the appearance of Duolingo's Klingon course and the increasing popularity of video chat platforms such as Zoom and Discord, the number of conversationally fluent speakers has definitely increased; in 2021, there are perhaps 50-60. Its vocabulary, heavily centered on Star Trek–Klingon concepts such as spacecraft or warfare, can sometimes make it cumbersome for everyday use. For instance, while words for transporter ionizer unit () or bridge (of a ship) () have been known since close to the language's inception, the word for bridge in the sense of a crossing over water () was unknown until August 2012.[15] Nonetheless, mundane conversations are possible among skilled speakers.[16]
One Klingon speaker, d'Armond Speers, raised his son Alec to speak Klingon as a first language, whilst the boy's mother communicated with him in English.[17] Alec rarely responded to his father in Klingon, although when he did, his pronunciation was "excellent". After Alec's fifth birthday, Speers reported that his son eventually stopped responding to him when spoken to in Klingon as he clearly did not enjoy it, so Speers switched to English.[18] [19]
In 2007, a report surfaced that Multnomah County, Oregon, was hiring Klingon translators for its mental health program in case patients came into a psychiatric hospital speaking nothing but Klingon.[20] Most circulations of the report seemingly implied that this was a problem that health officials faced before; however, the original report indicated that this was just a precaution for a hypothetical and that said translator would only be paid on an as needed basis.[20] After the report was misinterpreted, the County issued another release noting that releasing the original report was a "mistake".[20]
In May 2009, Simon & Schuster, in collaboration with Ultralingua Inc., a developer of electronic dictionary applications, announced the release of a suite of electronic Klingon language software for most computer platforms including a dictionary, a phrasebook, and an audio learning tool.[21]
In September 2011, Eurotalk released the "Learn Klingon" course in its Talk Now! series. The language is displayed in both Latin and pIqaD fonts, making this the first language course written in pIqaD and approved by CBS and Marc Okrand. It was translated by Jonathan Brown and Okrand and uses the TrueType font.[22]
In August 2016, a company in the United Kingdom, Bidvine, began offering Klingon lessons as one of their services.[23]
In March 2018, the popular language learning site Duolingo opened a beta course in Klingon. After it proved its effectiveness, the company offered to promote it from beta status, but due to ongoing software issues regarding Klingon's unexpected use of upper- and lower-case letters and the apostrophe as a consonant instead of punctuation, the course developers chose not to accept the offer until the problems were addressed.[24]
There are Klingon language meetings[25]