#explaining klingon

The Klingon Language Institute has lessons and resources for learning Klingon, plus a discord server where you can ask questions and practice with real people

On youtube, there is the "Learn Klingon The Easy(ish) Way" series, and also the Klingon Teacher From Germany channel that has lessons and lots of other Klingon language things too

There is a physical Klingon Dictionary which you can get on ebay or something, the white version with the three Klingons on the cover is the most up-to-date version

There is a an app called boQwI' (capital i, not lowercase L) which is a Klingon dictionary app that gets updated with new words mostly-regularly, it is a nice quick reference for Klingon words and how they're used (as well as prefixes and suffixes)

You can translate it literally as be' ram (women's night) if it's actually happening at night, or be' poH (women's time) if it's at any time, including at night

There is also the word chaj, which is glossed as "close female friend of a woman/girl", so chaj ram would be "the night of close female friends" (with chaj poH being "the time of close female friends")

At the beginning of the DS9 episode Dramatis Personae, a Klingon ship emerges from the wormhole. It has returned a month ahead of schedule, and then promptly explodes, while a single Klingon officer begins to materialize on the transporter platform. He safely transports, but then falls dead from his wounds, his last word: "Victory!"

Except the word "victory" is the only word I actually know in Klingon: Qapla'!

So when any character dramatically says it to somebody else, it usually stays in Klingon. For some reason in this one instance it doesn't: either he's speaking English or the universal translator translated his word into English.

Why?

In-universe answer: My personal theory is that the universal translators only activate if the language being spoken is unfamiliar to the listener, for example, Chekov's universal translator won't activate upon detecting Russian, Uhura's universal translator won't activate upon detecting Swahili ect. I would imagine that every other time that a Klingon said Qapla', the surrounding characters knew what it meant and the universal translators weren't activated, but in this instance, the surrounding characters did not know what it meant, so the universal translator was activated

Out-of-universe answer: Probably because the majority of Star Trek viewers (sadly) don't know any Klingon, and the Star Trek writers wanted the majority of viewers to understand that the Klingon said "victory" rather than "random Klingon word" (which is how they would render Klingon words in their minds)

Silly answer: Because the DS9 writers didn't want Tumblr user translating-posts-into-klingon to destroy their asses if they screw up the Klingon XD

If you have more to say I'd love to hear you elaborate on how Russian being your native language gives you an advantage in learning Klingon. Is it just about the pronunciation or does Klingon have actual Russian grammar elements or some other features that are reminiscent of Russian?

I know Klingon was created to sound very "harsh" and "foreign" to the ears of the anglophone audience and if I'm not mistaken the creator looked at Russian for inspiration, but I'm unsure if that's reflected anywhere but in the phonology?

A couple years ago I did briefly try to study Klingon through Duolingo, but my general dislike of Duolingo and its methods quickly put anend to that. Way before that I also taught myself how to read Cyrillic and then spent a couple of semesters studying Russian in a language class at my university. I forgot a lot of it but I'll definitely recognize aspects I learned, so if it's up to me you can actually go quite a bit into detail here :)

Just don't expect me to be able to have an actual discussion or contribute to it in any way. Спасибо)

It's about the pronounciation, and also a bit about the grammar too

The first thing I noticed when I started learning Klingon is that I had absolutely no problem with the Object-Verb-Subject sentence structure of Klingon (unlike the English-only speakers, who weren't used to it because English is Subject-Verb-Object), and that's because Russian doesn't require any sentence structure (because whether a word is a subject or an object is expressed through inflection), so Object-Verb-Subject didn't seem weird to be because I could speak in Object-Verb-Subject in Russian if I wanted to (I've actually noticed that after learning Klingon, I was more likely to say the object of the sentence first when speaking Russian!)

Knowing Russian does make pronouncing Klingon easier too, because Russian and Klingon share the rolled R sound, and because both Russian and Klingon vowels don't do the funny dipthong thing that English sometimes does (eg. English O sometimes sounds like eowh, while Russian and Klingon are just a flat O). Some of the sounds in Russian aren't completely identical to Klingon, but they still allowed me to sound good until I was able to pronounce everything properly (eg. I (capital i) sounds close enough to ы, S sounds close enough to щ and tlh sounds close enough to кь).

Also, I just think that having your first language be as painful as Russian makes you cracked at learning languages in general :P

One thing that I did find that makse Klingon more difficult for Russian speakers are the aspect suffixes. In English, aspect is the difference between something like "I saw it" (no aspect), "I had seen it" (perfective aspect) and "I was seeing it" (continuous aspect). In Klingon, aspect is expressed with suffixes (I saw it = vIlegh, I had seen it = vIleghpu', I was seeing it = vIleghtaH), and you don't have to have aspect if it's not necessary. In Russian, aspect is always built into every verb, so the continuous version of a verb, and the perfective version of a verb, are two entirely different verbs. Because aspect is automatically built in to Russian verbs, there's no such thing as a "no aspect" verb, which makes it really difficult to explain to a Russian speaker when to use or not to use (for example) the -taH suffix, because everything in Russian already has the -taH suffix (or -pu' for perfective), all the time! So I actually don't know how to explain aspect (or lack of aspect!) to a Russian speaker XD. The only reason why I know what it is, is because English is my other native language!

They don't have a single word for it, but it's possible to construct a phrase that describes it:

parmaq baghchuqghach

QInwIj Qav DaqawlaHchugh... = If you can remember my last email...

Example: QInwIj Qav DaqawlaHchugh, «yIHoH!» vIjatlh (If you can remember my last email, I said "Kill him!")

Or just

QInwIj Qav yIqaw! = Remember my last email!

Of course!

Dochqu' be'nI'wI'

I just watched through those ritual scenes in both DS9 and TNG, here are my translation notes: (warning: the Klingon in both of them is terrible 💀)

DS9:

Martok: martaq Degh, toDuj Degh, betleH Degh, meqleH Degh

[Martok's symbol, the symbol of courage, the symbol of the bat'leth, the symbol of the mek'leth]

Degh = symbol, insignia, emblem or medal

Martok + Worf: martaq Degh

[Martok's symbol]

Worf: «Alexander», vInob Daqtagh

[Alexander, I give you the D'k tahg]

This sentence is grammatically incorrect. Klingon sentences follow the order of object-verb-subject (the opposite of English sentences, which are subject-verb-object). Since the D'k tahg is the object of the sentence (because that is what's being given), the sentence should read Daqtagh vInob

Martok, Worf and Alexander: wochqa' 'Iw'a', wochqa' qorDu'

[the great blood is tall again, the family is tall again]

This is not a metaphor for anything, woch literally means "tall" as in a tall person. I somehow don't think this was the writers' intention.

Alexander: meqleH (?) Hegh

The only information that I could piece together from this sentence is that the object is the mek'leth, and the verb is "die". Klingon marks both subjects and objects using verb prefixes (eg. jIHegh = I die, bIHegh = you die), but the prefix in this sentence sounded like qI- or ghI-, but those prefixes do not exist.

Martok: DaH!

[Now!]

TNG:

Worf and Jeremy: SoS jIH batlh SoH

[I am mother, you are the general concept of honour]

I suspect that this sentence was the result of the Star Trek writers treating Klingon as a cipher/word replacement engine rather than a language with its own set of grammatical rules. The suspected intention was "Mother I honour you", and they just replaced each individual English word with the Klingon "equivalent" (SoS = mother, jIH = I, batlh = the general concept of honour, SoH = you) Unfortunately, Klingon sentences are still object-verb-subject, and in the absence of any other verbs, Klingon pronouns double up as "to be" verbs (eg. jIH = I am, SoH = you are). So SoS jIH = "I am mother", and batlh SoH = "you are the general concept of honour"

I also specify batlh as being the "general concept of honour" because Klingon actually has another word for honour: quv, which refers to an individual's personal honour-status. quv is also a verb which means to be honoured/honourable, and the verb "to honour (somebody)" would be quvmoH (to cause someone to be honoured).

Therefore, the correct rendering of "Mother I honour you" would be SoS, qaquvmoH (qa- being the prefix that indicates a first person subject (I) to a second person object (you))

This probably goes without saying, but don't try to copy the pronunciations in these scenes either, because they are uhhhhh also bad 💀