I’ve noticed that one of my more popular videos recently has been my old video about
the basics of the Klingon language, and it has gotten quite a bit of attention, including
from the Klingon Teacher from Germany, Lieven Litaer.
However, in the four years since I made it, not only have I learned how to actually pronounce
Klingon words, the video itself has gotten quite a bit…
dated.
So, here’s my reboot of the first episode of my old Klingon for Humans series.
Hopefully much better than the original, and with not so much JJ Abrams.
For those of you who don’t know anything about Klingon, Klingon is a fictional, constructed
language (or conlang), created by Marc Okrand to be the language of the Klingons from Star
Trek.
It may sound like an incoherent ramble of harsh, guttural sounds, but it is still as
rule-based and organized as any language on Earth.
Now, I’m not going to teach you basic phrases, since so many others have covered that by
now, nor will I cover how to pronounce each of the sounds, since I have already covered
that by now.
What I will do, however, is give you a brief, quick glimpse into how the grammar of the
language works.
First off, one core part of Klingon grammar is that Klingon is an agglutinative language,
like Korean or Turkish.
This means that you can often string sentences together into just one word, through prefixes
and suffixes.
Klingon prefixes are all used for identifying the subject and the object, though interestingly,
at the same time.
In English, if I were to hit you, I would say, “I hit you”, and you would probably
respond quite sensibly with, “ow, what the f…”; in Klingon, however, to hit is qIp
(yes, Klingon words are capitalized like that, deal with it), and if it were something I
am doing to you, I would add the prefix qa-, so, “I hit you” becomes “qaqIp”, “you
hit me” becomes “choqIp”, etc.
Here’s a graph to make it easier.
By the way, if it’s just you doing the action, just use this column, on the furthest left,
where the object is nothing.
For example, Qong is to sleep, jIQong is I sleep, bIQong is you sleep, etc.
Klingon uses a clever system of organizing its suffixes, involving numbering them all
into different categories.
There are nine categories of Klingon suffixes, dealing with size, number, qualification,
possession, syntactic markers, etc.
Now, in most agglutinative languages, there are a few examples of really long words to
show how crazy it can get, and Klingon is no different.
One example is the phrase QaghHommeyHeylIjmo’, meaning due to your apparent minor errors.
This one-word sentence looks like a monster, but we can easily split it up and dissect
it.
Qagh refers to an error, or a mistake, -Hom is a type 1, diminutive suffix, which makes
it a minor error (QaghHom), -mey is the plural suffix (type 2) for anything not an intelligent
being or a body part (QaghHommey - minor errors), -Hey means that somthing was apparent, -lIj
means that they belonged to you (and it’s something that doesn’t use language), and
-mo’ means that it was due to that, or something else had happened because of that.
Simple!
(pg. 21) Klingon, when not mashing everything into
just one word, has an interesting word order compared to English.
The word order in Klingon is object-verb-subject (OVS), meaning that the object affected by
the verb goes first, then the verb itself, and the subject causing the action goes last.
This is the exact reverse of what it is in English, which can make it a bit confusing
at first.
So, if I were to say the child (puq) follows (tlha’) the officer (yaS), it would come
out as yaS tlha’ puq, which sounds like the officer is following the child, right?
The way I get around this is by instead thinking “the officer is followed by the child”,
that isn’t exactly how it’s supposed to work, but it’s helpful when reversing word
order.
(pg. 58) Klingon also has a series of suffixes called
lengwI’mey, or rovers, which are suffixes with no set place in a word, and often go
in different places, depending on context.
One good example of this is the suffix -qu’, which emphasizes whichever word or suffix
came right before it.
An example used in the official Klingon Dictionary is the sentence pIHoHvIpbe’, for we are
not afraid to kill you (yeah, Klingons, charming bunch, am I right?) pI- is the we-you suffix,
HoH means to kill, -vIp means afraid, and -be’ negates vIp, so vIpbe’ means not
afraid.
Now, putting in -qu’, we can get pIHoHvIpbe’qu’ (we are NOT afraid to kill you), pIHoHvIpqu’be’
(we are not AFRAID to kill you), or pIHoHqu’vIpbe’ (we are not afraid to KILL you).
(pg. 47) Conjunctions are also really interesting,
things like and (‘ej/je), and/or (qoj/joq), and or (pagh/ghap), since they don’t work
too differently from English when joining sentences (for example: bImoH ‘ej QIp juplI’
[you are ugly, and your friend is stupid]), but it works a little differently when joining
nouns, like in lists, like wo’rIv ghawran joq vIneH [I want Worf and/or Gowron], as
it comes after all the listed nouns.
Finally, one important aspect to speaking like a Klingon is clipped Klingon, where some
redundant prefixes and suffixes can be chopped off to make for a shorter sentence.
This is most common on the battlefield, where long, carefully crafted, elegant sentences
aren’t exactly efficient for giving quick orders.
Sometimes you just got to get the job done.
For example, wIy yIcha’ (show the tactical display) can simply be said as wIy cha’,
dropping off the commanding prefix yI-, or from jIyajchu’ (I understood) to just yajchu’
(understood).
Not exactly what would bring a Klingon grammarian joy, but still understandable.
Clipped Klingon can also delete words, like from HaSta yIcha’ (show the visual display)
to HaSta (visual).
Now, I could never cover all the aspects of Klingon in a video short enough for my channel,
and then again, neither could Marc Okrand’s official Klingon Dictionary.
But, to be honest, the Klingon Dictionary still helps a lot, seriously, buy it if you’re
interested in learning more about Klingon grammar, it really does a great job of explaining
it (not sponsored).
Thanks for watching this video, and please let me know if I should make more of these
Klingon for Humans videos again, in the comments below.
Also, let me know if there’s anything important that I missed, if you spot anything.
Be sure to like, share, and subscribe to learn something new every Sunday, and follow me
on Twitter (@KhAnubis) for new updates, and stuff like that.