LEARNING AN ALIEN LANGUAGE ON DUOLINGO

A number of our pupils in Key Stages 3 and 4 use Duolingo and have built up a good memory bank of key vocabulary. Most use the app to support a language they are studying, others to learn a completely new language. I wonder, however, if any have thought about learning an alien language such as Klingon?

What is Klingon?

The Klingon language (Klingon: tlhIngan Hol, pronounced [ˈt͡ ͡͡ .ŋɑn xol]) 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 Star Trek: The Motion Picture. That 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.

A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon but because its vocabulary is heavily centred on Star Trek-Klingon concepts such as spacecraft or warfare, it can sometimes be cumbersome for everyday use.

The Klingon alphabet looks like this:

Marc Okrand wanted the language to be as complicated as possible to make it sound alien. The word order in a sentence is always object-verb-subject which is the opposite of word order in English. For instance, the English sentence "I see the cat" is said as "the cat see I" in Klingon. When writing in Klingon some letters are in upper case and some are in lower case, and it uses affixation to denote the subject and negation. For example:

At least nine Klingon translations of works of world literature have been published, among which are: ghIlghameS (the Epic of Gilgamesh), Hamlet (Hamlet), paghmoʼ tIn mIS (Much Ado About Nothing), pInʼaʼ qan paQDIʼnorgh (Tao Te Ching), Sun pInʼaʼ veS mIw (the Art of War), chIchwI' tIQ bom (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner), 'aS 'IDnar pIn'a' Dun (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), taʼpuq mach (the Little Prince), and QelIS boqHarmey (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland). The Shakespearean choices were inspired by a remark from High Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, who said, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon."

So why learn a made-up or constructed language (“conlang”)?

Duolingo gives a number of reasons:

1. To help people connect and communicate with each other about the topics they love in “conlag” communities.

2. To engage more deeply with the television series they love – in this case ‘Star Trek’. There are Star Trek conventions, Duolingo events and even a Klingon Language Institute – see https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Klingon_Language_Institute

3. It allows users to express themselves creatively, to imagine and explore fictional cultures.

4. The experience can allow you to develop a metalinguistic awareness – the ability to think about different properties of a language such as pronunciation and grammar.

5. “Conlags” can foster interest in further language study – Duolingo states that 43% of its users who study a “conlag” go on to study another language on Duolingo.

Mr G Stephenson