Doubters Can Scoff, But Klingon Is Real
KLINGON LINQUISTICS
Coming To A Galaxy Near You Soon: An Opera In 'Klingon'
By N. Stag
LANGUAGE, ACCORDING TO LINGUIST AND ALL-AROUND INTELLECT NOAM CHOMSKY, results from formulaic rules that govern all human verbal communication. One such language, only spoken by 100 or so people fluently, is Klingon.
Mark Okrand, consultant for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, wrote the audiobook
Conversational Klingon 25 years ago. Klingon follows the universal rules of grammar and syntax, and therefore can be spoken as well as any "real" language.
Proof of this is the newest project to come from the Klingon Terran Research Ensemble: An opera called, simply, u, which performs part of Klingon mythology. The ensemble has been writing the opera for the last year with the "ambitious goal" of holding future performances.
I heard about this serious endeavor on NPR.
I think the best quote, from Okrand himself, is, "People are translating the works of Shakespeare into Klingon. They're translating all kinds of songs. I saw someone perform Alice's Restaurant in Klingon, which was amazing. I saw people doing a riff on Abbott and Costello's 'Who's on First?' and people who didn't even understand the language got the joke."
I've never seen Star Trek, only found out about the new movie few days ago, and I don't plan on seeing it. (It's a prequel and therefore has no Klingon in it anyway). But if u makes it way here, maybe I'll put that on my calendar.
Because even though u the idea sounds alien, as Jorn Weisbrodt of the Byrd Hoffman Watermill Foundation in New York explains, "it really is the result that matters, and I found the result quite fascinating and interesting and strange and weird."
N. Stag is a graduate of the University of Michigan and winner of seven writing awards for fiction and fashion-writing. She has written for many websites and currently teaches English.
Tags: Pop Culture
