22 Comments
11
It's not specifically about this sentence but I would like to applause the contributors of this course, who made hard work during more than a year to offer us Klingon, not disappointed of the waiting !
This is not the national language of any country. There are speakers spread around the world in many countries. This is a language which was constructed for use by the fictional Klingon alien race in the Star Trek movies and TV shows. It is a real language with real structure and extensive vocabulary, but it does not actually have any native speakers and the practical uses are extremely limited, so it's mostly studied as a hobby. Many of the language's top speakers speak multiple natural languages and have very complicated and useful jobs, but want to just do something fun and useless from time to time. If it sounds interesting, check it out. If not, thanks for asking - I hope you've learned something today.
That’s right: the apostrophe counts as a letter in Klingon and represents the glottal stop.
This isn't really about the sentence, but I have to say, I personally love this language, but it's hard for me to learn without audio... I'll be learning it by letters meanwhile! :D
Yes, it’s unfortunate!
Until we have audio, pay extra special attention to the difference between the letters I (capital i) and l (small L) — the latter should have a small curl at the bottom.
Oops. I misread your question as between vI- and jI-. Use bI- when the one doing the understanding is the person you are talking to and you want to be general and not refer to some specific thing. bIyaj "You understand."
There is also Da- for when the person doing the action is the person you are talking to and you want to specify something specific. Dayaj "You understand it."
To be clear about what jdmcowan said: “the person” (singular) is important here; you would not use bIyaj. if you are talking o several people at once. The prefixes for “you” when speaking to several people at once are taught later.
No, not JLYAJBE but jIyajbe'.
All the letters have to be lowercase, except for the second letter which is an uppercase i. Also, you left out the last letter, which is ' (an apostrophe).
I have gathered from listening to Worf that nothing from Klingon would translate into a contraction (e.g. "don't"). Is that just Worf being a dork, or is there a grammar rule on this?
Klingon does not have contractions, but there is no reason that you can't use contractions in your English translations.
It used to be that people learning English we taught that contractions were too informal and that they never use them for fear of seeking too casual. Even still, today, many English learners find contractions confusing. Because of these reasons it is a stereotype that people who have learned English as a second language avoid contractions.
I'm sure that the producers and writers on Star Trek took advantage of that and refused to let Worf use contractions as a subtle way to imply his foreigners. Same with Spock in The Original Series.
