Language
Hobbyists around the world have studied the Klingon language. Four Klingon translations of works of world literature have been published: ghIlghameS (Gilgamesh), Hamlet (Hamlet), paghmo' tIn mIS (Much Ado About Nothing) and pIn'a' qan paQDI'norgh (Tao Te Ching). The Shakespearian 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." In the bonus material on the DVD, screenwriter Nicholas Meyer and actor William Shatner both explain that this was an allusion to the German myth that Shakespeare was in fact German.
The Klingon Language Institute exists to promote the language.
Paramount Pictures owns a copyright of the official dictionary and other canonical descriptions of the language. Additionally, while the validity is disputed by legal scholars, the copyright of the Klingon language is owned by Paramount as well. While constructed languages ("conlangs") are viewed as creations with copyright protection, natural languages are not protected, excluding dictionaries and/or other works created with them. Mizuki Miyashita and Laura Moll note, "Copyrights on dictionaries are unusual because the entries in the dictionary are not copyrightable as the words themselves are facts, and facts can not be copyrighted. However, the formatting, example sentences, and instructions for dictionary use are created by the author, so they are copyrightable." Whether constructed languages can be copyrighted was tested in court in the example of Loglan and its derivative Lojban.
Even though Marc Okrand has studied the indigenous languages of the Americas, the Klingon language is not based upon any of those languages. Okrand himself has stated that a design principle of the Klingon language was dissimilarity to existing natural languages in general, and English in particular. He therefore avoided patterns that are typologically common and deliberately chose features that occur relatively infrequently in human languages. This includes above all the highly asymmetric consonant inventory and the basic word order.
The 2003–2010 version of the puzzle globe logo of Wikipedia, representing its multilingualism, contained a Klingon character. The updated logo removed the character and substituted one from the Ge'ez script.
Read more about this topic: Klingon Language
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.”
—Louise Bogan (1897–1970)
“Our goal as a parent is to give life to our children’s learning—to instruct, to teach, to help them develop self-discipline—an ordering of the self from the inside, not imposition from the outside. Any technique that does not give life to a child’s learning and leave a child’s dignity intact cannot be called discipline—it is punishment, no matter what language it is clothed in.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)
“It is impossible to dissociate language from science or science from language, because every natural science always involves three things: the sequence of phenomena on which the science is based; the abstract concepts which call these phenomena to mind; and the words in which the concepts are expressed. To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality.”
—Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794)