This article contains privateUnicode characters. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of the intended characters. The following fonts may support these characters: pIqaD, Constructium, Unifont CSUR, Klingon pIqaD HaSta, Code2000, and Horta.
Described in the 1985 bookThe Klingon Dictionary byMarc Okrand and deliberately designed to sound "alien", it has a number oftypologically uncommon features. The language's basic sound, along with a few words, was devised by actorJames Doohan ("Scotty") and producerJon Povill forStar Trek: The Motion Picture. 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 asKlingonese (most notably in theStar Trek: The Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", where it was actually pronounced by a Klingon character as "Klingonee"/ˈklɪŋɡɒni/), but among the Klingon-speaking community, this is often understood[2][3][4] to refer to another Klingon language calledKlingonaase that was introduced inJohn M. Ford's 1984Star Trek novelThe Final Reflection, and appears in otherStar Trek novels by Ford.[5]
The playA Klingon Christmas Carol is the first production that is primarily in Klingon (only the narrator speaks English). The operaʼuʼ is entirely in Klingon.
A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon. Because its vocabulary is heavily centered onStar Trek-Klingon concepts such asspacecraft orwarfare, it can be hard for everyday use because of the lack of words for a casual conversation.
The language is first mentioned in the originalStar Trek series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" (1967), but is not heard untilStar Trek: The Motion Picture (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.[6]
Two "non-canon" dialects of Klingon are hinted at in the novelization ofStar Trek III: The Search for Spock, asSaavik speaks in Klingon to the only Klingon officer aboard Cpt. Kruge's starship after his death, as the survivors of theEnterprise's self-destruction transport up from the crumbling Genesis Planet to the Klingon ship. The surviving officer,Maltz, states that he speaks theRumaiy dialect, while Saavik is speaking to him in theKumburan dialect of Klingon, per Maltz's spoken reply to her.[9]
With the advent of the seriesStar Trek: The Next Generation (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 auniversal translator, is unable to understand) until one Klingon orders the others to "speak their [i.e., human] language".[10]
A small number of non-Klingon characters were later depicted inStar Trek as having learned to speak Klingon, notablyJean-Luc Picard andDax.[10]
CBS Studios owns thecopyright on the officialdictionary and othercanonical descriptions of the language. While constructed languages ("conlangs") are viewed as creations with copyright protection,[12] 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."[13]
Okrand had studied someNative American andSoutheast Asian languages,[14][15] and phonological and grammatical features of these languages "worked their way into Klingon, but for the most part, not by design."[6] 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 aretypologically common and deliberately chose features that occur relatively infrequently in human languages. This includes above all the highly asymmetric consonant inventory and the basicword order.[16]
A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon.Arika Okrent guessed in her 2009 bookIn the Land of Invented Languages that there might be 20–30 fluent speakers.[17] Its vocabulary, heavily centered onStar Trek–Klingon concepts such asspacecraft orwarfare, can sometimes make it cumbersome for everyday use. For instance, while words fortransporter ionizer unit (jolvoyʼ) orbridge (of a ship) (meH) have been known since close to the language's inception, the word forbridge in the sense of a crossing over water (QI) was unknown until August 2012.[18] Nonetheless, mundane conversations are possible among skilled speakers.[19]
One Klingon speaker,d'Armond Speers, raised his son Alec to speak Klingon as a first language, while the boy's mother communicated with him in English.[20] 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.[21][22]
In 2007, a report surfaced thatMultnomah County, Oregon, was hiring Klingon translators for its mental health program in case patients came into a psychiatric hospital speaking nothing but Klingon.[23] 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.[23] After the report was misinterpreted, the County issued another release noting that releasing the original report was a "mistake".[23]
In May 2009,Simon & Schuster, in collaboration withUltralingua 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.[24]
In September 2011,Eurotalk released the "Learn Klingon" course in itsTalk 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 andMarc Okrand. It was translated by Jonathan Brown and Okrand and uses theHol-pIqaDTrueType font.[25]
In August 2016, a company in the United Kingdom, Bidvine, began offering Klingon lessons as one of their services.[26]
In March 2018, the popular language learning siteDuolingo opened a beta course in Klingon. After proving popular, 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.[27]
There are Klingon language meetings[28][29] and linguists or students are interested in researching this topic, even writing essays about the language or its users.
In July 2015, theWelsh Government issued a written statement in the Klingon language. Following a formal questioning of the Economy MinisterEdwina Hart regarding the funding of research intoUFO sightings aroundCardiff Airport byMember of the SeneddDarren Millar, a press officer in the Minister's office issued the reply:
jang vIDa je due luq. ʼach ghotvamʼeʼ QIʼyaH-devolved qaS
The Java edition ofMinecraft[35] has a Klingon language setting.
The 2003–2010 version of thepuzzle globe logo ofWikipedia, representing its multilingualism, contained a Klingon character. When updated in 2010, the Klingon character was removed from the logo, and substituted with one from theGe'ez script.[36] AKlingon language Wikipedia was started in June 2004 attlh.wikipedia.org. It was permanently locked in August 2005 and moved toWikia.[37][38] The KlingonWiktionary was closed in 2008.[39]
The file management softwareXYplorer has been translated into Klingon by its developer.[42]
Microsoft'sBing Translator attempts to translate Klingon from and to other languages.[43][44] It can do a good job with individual words, and with phrases included in its training corpus, but it is not well tuned for Klingon's system ofprefixes andsuffixes. For example,DaHaDnIS "You must study it" is rendered instead as "They Must Study."
With the digital-only release ofStar Trek: Discovery in 2017, streaming serviceNetflix announced it would provide Klingon subtitles for the entire first season,[45] translated by Klingon language expertLieven L. Litaer.[46] They can be enabled like any other language provided by the streaming service, and are shown using romanized transliteration rather than Klingon script.
In 2020 the German artist Hans Solo (Äi-Tiem) released anEPNuqneH, whose 5 tracks are completely rapped in Klingon language.[47]
An important concept to spoken and written Klingon iscanonicity. Only words and grammatical forms introduced by Marc Okrand are considered canonical Klingon by the KLI and most Klingonists.[51] However, as the growing number of speakers employ different strategies to express themselves, it is often unclear as to what level ofneologism is permissible.[52] New vocabulary has been collected in a list maintained by the KLI until 2005[53] and has since then been followed up by Klingon expertLieven Litaer until the KLI's website was renewed in 2015.[54]
Within the fictional universe ofStar Trek, Klingon is derived from the original language spoken by the messianic figureKahless the Unforgettable, who united the Klingon home-world ofQoʼnoS under one empire more than 1500 years ago.[55]
Klingon has been developed with aphonology that, while based on humannatural languages, is intended to soundalien to human ears. When initially developed, Paramount Pictures (owners of theStar Trekfranchise) wanted the Klingon language to be guttural and harsh and Okrand wanted it to be unusual, so he selectedsounds that combined in ways not generally found in other languages. The effect is mainly achieved by the use of a number ofretroflex anduvular consonants in the language's inventory.[56] Klingon has twenty-one consonants and five vowels. Klingon is normally written in a variant of theLatin alphabet. The orthography of thistransliteration iscase-sensitive, that is,upper andlower case letters are not interchangeable (uppercase letters mostly represent sounds different from those expected by English speakers), although with the exception of Q/q there are nominimal pairs between case. In other words, whilehol is incorrect Klingon, it cannot be misread as anything but an erroneous form ofHol (which meanslanguage); on the other hand,Qat andqat are two different words, the first meaningbe popular and the second meaningaccompany. In the discussion below, standard Klingon orthography appears in⟨angle brackets⟩, and thephonemic transcription in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet is written between/slashes/.
The inventory of consonants in Klingon is spread over a number ofplaces of articulation. In spite of this, the inventory has many gaps: Klingon has novelar plosives, and only onesibilant fricative; common consonants absent in Klingon include/kɡfhszʃ/. Deliberately, this arrangement is very different from that of most human languages. The combination of an aspiratedvoiceless alveolar plosive/tʰ/ and avoiced retroflex plosive/ɖ/ is particularly unusual.
There are a few dialectal pronunciation differences[55] (it is not known if the aforementioned non-canonKumburan orRumaiy dialects oftlhIngan Hol hinted at in the novelization ofStar Trek III: The Search for Spock might differ):
In the Krotmag dialect/b/ and/ɖ/ are realized as nasal stops[m] and[ɳ]
In the Tak'ev dialect/b/ and/ɖ/ are pre-nasalized oral stops[mb] and[ɳɖ]
In contrast to its consonants, Klingon's inventory of vowels is simple, and similar to those of many human languages, such asSpanish orJapanese. There are five vowels spaced more or less evenly around the vowel space, with two back rounded vowels, one back unrounded vowel, and two front or near-front unrounded vowels. The vowel inventory is asymmetrical in that the back rounded vowels are tense and the front vowels are lax.
The two front vowels,⟨e⟩ and⟨I⟩, represent sounds that are found inEnglish, but are more open and lax than a typical English speaker might assume when reading Klingon text written in the Latin alphabet, thus causing the consonants of a word to be more prominent. This enhances the sense that Klingon is a clipped and harsh-sounding language.
Diphthongs can be analyzed phonetically as the combination of the five vowels plus one of the twosemivowels/w/ and/j/ (represented by⟨w⟩ and⟨y⟩, respectively). Thus, the combinations⟨ay⟩,⟨ey⟩,⟨Iy⟩,⟨oy⟩,⟨uy⟩,⟨aw⟩,⟨ew⟩ and⟨Iw⟩ are possible. There are no words in the Klingon language that contain *⟨ow⟩ or *⟨uw⟩.
Klingon follows a strictsyllable structure. A syllable must start with a consonant (including the glottal stop) followed by one vowel. In prefixes and rare other syllables, this is enough. More commonly, this consonant-vowel pair is followed by one consonant or one of three biconsonantalcodas: /-wʼ -yʼ -rgh/. Thus,ta "record",tar "poison" andtargh "targ" (a type of animal) are all legal syllable forms, but *tarD and *ar are not. Despite this, one suffix takes the shape vowel+consonant: the endearment suffix-oy.
Inverbs, the stressed syllable is usually the verbal stem itself, as opposed to a prefix or any suffixes, except when a suffix ending with⟨ʼ⟩ is separated from the verb by at least one other suffix, in which case the suffix ending in⟨ʼ⟩ is also stressed. In addition, stress may shift to a suffix that is meant to be emphasized.
Innouns, the final syllable of the stem (the noun itself, excluding any affixes) is stressed. If any syllables ending in⟨ʼ⟩ are present, the stress shifts to those syllables.
The stress in other words seems to be variable, but this is not a serious issue because most of these words are only one syllable in length. There are some words which should fall under the rules above, but do not, although using the standard rules would still be acceptable.
Klingon is anagglutinative language, using mainly affixes in order to alter the function or meaning of words. Some nouns have inherently plural forms, such asjengvaʼ "plate" (vs.ngop "plates"), but most nouns require a suffix to express plurality explicitly. Depending on the type of noun (body part, being capable of using language, or neither) the suffix changes. For beings capable of using language, the suffix is-puʼ, as intlhInganpuʼ, meaning "Klingons," orjaghpuʼ, meaning "enemies". For body parts, the plural suffix is-Duʼ, as inmInDuʼ, "eyes". For items that are neither body parts nor capable of speech, the suffix is-mey, such as inHovmey ("stars"), ortarghmey ("targs") for a Klingon animal somewhat resembling a boar. (However, a plural suffix is never obligatory. To say "The stars are beautiful",ʼIH Hovmey andʼIH Hov are equally grammatical, although the second can also mean "The star is beautiful".)
The wordsloD andbeʼ, which on their own mean "man" and "woman" respectively, can be used in compound words to refer to the referent's sex. For example, frompuq ("child") this process derivespuqloD ("son") andpuqbeʼ ("daughter").
Klingonnouns take suffixes to indicategrammatical number. There are threenoun classes, two levels ofdeixis, and a possession and syntactic function. In all, twenty-nine noun suffixes from five classes may be employed:jupoypuʼnaʼwIʼvaD "for my beloved true friends". A word may carry no more than one suffix from each class, and the classes have a specific order of appearance.
Verbs in Klingon take a prefix indicating the number and person of the subject and object, whereas suffixes are taken from nine ordered classes and a special suffix class called rovers. Each of the four known rovers has a unique rule controlling its position among the suffixes in the verb. Verbs are marked foraspect, certainty, predisposition and volition, dynamic,causative,mood,negation, andhonorific. The Klingon verb has two moods:indicative andimperative.
The most commonword order in Klingon isobject–verb–subject, and, in most cases, the word order is the exact reverse of English for an equivalent sentence:
An important aspect of Klingon grammar is its "ungrammaticality". As with for exampleJapanese, shortening of communicative statements is common, and is called "Clipped Klingon" (tlhIngan Hol poD or, more simply,Hol poD) and Ritualized Speech.[clarification needed] Clipped Klingon is especially useful in situations where speed is a decisive factor. Grammar is abbreviated, and sentence parts deemed to be superfluous are dropped. Intentional ungrammaticality is widespread, and it takes many forms. It is exemplified by the practice ofpabHaʼ, which Marc Okrand translates as "to misfollow the rules" or "to follow the rules wrongly".[55]
When written in the Latin alphabet, Klingon is unusual in beingcase-sensitive, with some letters written in capitals and others in lowercase. In one contrast,q andQ, there is an actual case-sensitive pair representing two different consonants. Capitals are generally reserved for uvular or retroflex consonants pronounced further back in the mouth or throat than is normal for the corresponding English sounds, as withD,Q, andS. However,H, pronounced like the⟨ch⟩ in German "ach" or Scottish "loch", is further forward in the throat than English /h/. One phoneme, the vowelI, is written capital to look more like the IPA symbol for the sound /ɪ/, and can pose problems when writing Klingon in sans-serif fonts such asArial, as it looks almost the same as the consonantl.
This has led some Klingon enthusiasts to write it lowercase like the other vowels ("i") to prevent confusion, but this use is non-canonical. Instead, a serif font that clearly distinguishes "I" and "l", such asCourier orCourier New, has traditionally been employed for writing Klingon in the Latin alphabet. In any case, it can be disambiguated through context, asI never occurs next to another vowel, whilel always does. The apostrophe, denoting theglottal stop, is considered a letter, not a punctuation mark, as with theʻokina in theHawaiian alphabet.
a b ch D e gh H I j l m n ng o p q Q r S t tlh u v w y ʼ
Klingon is often written in (in-universe, "transliterated to") theLatin alphabet as used above, but on the television series, the Klingons use their own alien writing system. InThe Klingon Dictionary, this alphabet is namedpIqaD, but no information is given about it. When Klingon symbols are used inStar Trek productions, they are merely decorative graphic elements, designed to emulate realwriting and create an appropriate atmosphere. Enthusiasts have settled on the namepIqaD for this writing system.
The Astra Image Corporation designed the symbols currently used to "write" Klingon forStar Trek: The Motion Picture, although these symbols are often incorrectly attributed toMichael Okuda.[b] They based the letters on theKlingon battlecruiser hull markings (three letters) first created byMatt Jefferies and onTibetan writing because the script has sharp letter forms—used as a testament to the Klingons' love for knives and blades.
ForApril Fools' Day in 2013,Nokia and the typography companyDalton Maag claimed to have used "communication devices to far-flung star systems"[57] to assist them in localizing theNokia Pure font of the Klingon writing system. Though the explanation was of course humorous in nature, as part of thepractical joke, a series of real fonts based upon the most commonly usedpIqaD character mapping were in fact developed, and have been made available for free download.[57]
A design principle of the Klingon language is the great degree of lexical-cultural correlation in the vocabulary. For example, there are several words meaning "to fight" or "to clash against", each having a different degree of intensity. There is an abundance of words relating to warfare and weaponry and also a great variety of curses (cursing is considered a fine art in Klingon culture). This helps lend a particular character to the language.
There are many in-jokes built into the language.[58] For example, the word for "pair" ischangʼeng, a reference to the original "Siamese twins"Chang and Eng Bunker; aleSpal is a mid-size stringed instrument, comparable to aguitar (i.e.Les Paul);[7] a "chronometer" istlhaq (pronounced similar to "clock"); the word for "torture" isjoy; "hangover" isʼuH, and the word for "fish" isghotIʼ.[7]
Sources for the vocabulary include English (albeit heavily disguised), and alsoYiddish:SaʼHut for "buttocks" (fromתּחתtuches spelled backwards),[7] andʼoyʼ for "ache, pain, sore" (cf.oy vey).[59]
Many English words do not have direct translations into Klingon. To express "hello", the nearest equivalent isnuqneH, meaning "What do you want?",[7] with "goodbye" translated asQapla', "Success!".
Symbols attributed to Okuda: the Klingon Language Institute'sKlingon FAQ (edited byd'Armond Speers),question 2.13 by Will Martin (August 18, 1994).
Symbolsincorrectly attributed to Okuda: KLI founder Lawrence M. Schoen's"On Orthography" (PDF), citing J. Lee's "An Interview with Michael Okuda" in the KLI's journalHolQeD 1.1 (March 1992), p. 11.
Symbols actually designed by Astra Image Corporation: Michael Everson'sProposal...[3]
^abcOkrand, Mark; Adams, Michael; Hendriks-Hermans, Judith; Kroon, Sjaak (December 1, 2011). "Wild and Whirling Words: The Invention and Use of Klingon". In Adams, Michael (ed.).From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages. Oxford University Press. pp. 111–134.ISBN978-0-192-80709-0.
^An attribution to Okrand may be found in the museum displays at theSan Juan Bautista, California State Historic Park, which includes a short mention of the localMutsun native people whom Okrand studied for his thesis.
^Okrent, Arika (2010).In the Land of Invented Languages. New York: Spiegel & Grau. p. 273.But what about speakers in the sense of people who can carry on a spontaneous live conversation in Klingon? (...) I would say, oh, twenty or so. Maybe thirty.
^Dean, Eddie (August 9, 1996)."Klingon as a Second Language".Washington City Paper.Archived from the original on September 5, 2018. RetrievedNovember 23, 2018.
^ab"Babel".Fry's Planet Word. September 25, 2011.BBC TV.
^"Babble On Revisited".Wired.com. August 1, 1999.Archived from the original on November 24, 2018. RetrievedNovember 23, 2018.
^"5 resources to help you translate, read, and learn to speak Klingon (seriously)".geektime. Singapore. 17 March 2017.Archived from the original on 25 March 2024. Retrieved25 March 2024.Rival app Memrise, which allows users to create their own courses and thus offers many more classes than Duolingo, has several separate mini courses on things like Klingon vocabulary, the Klingon alphabet, affixes, basic grammar, shapes, days of the week, adverbs, numbers, and even a review course for the Klingon Language Certification Program (KLCP1).
