Klingon

Michael Dorn as Worf, the first Klingon character in the Star Trek series

Language info: Klingon is a so far unique phenomenon in that it was invented for entertainment purposes but has been acquiring a “cult” following beyond “Trekkies,” beyond the mass of fans of the science fiction film series Star Trek for which the fantasy language was devised.
     Be they Trekkies or not, numerous linguistically interested people all over the world have joined the Klingon language movement for various reasons. Some have become very proficient in the language, read, write and speak it, translate world literature into it and even write and perfom songs in Klingon.
     Deliberately designed to seem alien, the language was created by the linguist Marc Okrand for Paramount Pictures as the language of the space alien Klingon Empire for the cinema series of Star Trek.
     As far as fictitious languages go, Klingon is structurally rather solidly based. Its structure is agglutinative (much like the structures of Uralic and Altaic languages, for instance).
     Paramount Pictures claims copyright of the Klingon language, but some Klingon language enthusiasts dispute this. Another bone of contention is that of canonicity. The Klingon Language Institute and other orthodox followers accept only words and grammatical forms introduced by Marc Okrand as legitimate, while other followers call for greater freedom in the further development of the language.
     The predominant “native” Klingon writing system is the tlhIngan pIqaD. Its predominant system of transliteration uses lower- and upper-case Roman letters as well as letter combinations for phonemic distinction. It can only be assumed that this is in part to provide phonetic hints and in part to simply look “alien.” Phonologically, it is actually redundant in that there is only one minimal upper- and lower-case pair (q [q^h] and Q [qχ]). For instance, the upper-case letters D and S symbolize retroflex sounds, but there are no non-retroflex counterparts, therefore no use of lower-case d and s. The digraph gh symbolizes the fricative version ([γ]) of /g/, but there is no g ([g]) to contrast it with.

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Author: Reinhard F. Hahn