Star Trek April 5, 2010
Posted by style in : Style , add a commentStar Trek is not just for geeks anymore. JJ Abrams recent resurrection of the Star Trek franchise proved it. Capturing the attention of a whole new generation of trekkies, the Abram’s installment beamed up younger fans to the Enterprise who were just being introduced to Captain James T. Kirk for the first time. This new fan base, combined with the diehard fans that have been rocking the Vulcan salute for over 40 years now, can be attributed to the large turnout alien language designer Marc Okrand received from George Mason University last Friday.
Okrand is the designer behind the alien language Klingon used in many of the Star Trek films. The veteran linguist is also responsible for developing the language used in the Disney animated film Atlantis. A god to those familiar with the franchise, Okrand unveiled the secrets of Klingon to a waving room of Vulcan salutes and anxious fans.
James Doohan, the actor who played Scotty in the television series, came up with the idea of Klingon orginally. Okrand took it one step further though in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Actually, make that two Klingon Dictionaries, several Shakspeare plays translated into the alien language and one Klingon Language Institute further. What started out as just a few phrases developed into a functional language. A language only some of the most hardcore Trek fans can claim to know.
Klingon, known as tlhlngan Hol to Klingon natives, is unlike anything ever spoken. Vowels and constants are used in the language according to Okrand but are the only familiar grammar aspects English speakers will recongnize. There are emphasized gaps in words, apostrophes are letters instead of punctuation marks and there are random capitalized letters inside of words. If those rules don’t confuse you then Okrand’s decision to eliminate all K’s in the language will. Good luck spelling Klingon. Okrand defended this decision with the excuse that “K’s are always at the beginning of words that are used to describe bad things in movies.”
Klingon is even harder to pronounce then it is to learn. So despite the many groups of people who identify it as a real language,