A history of Klingon

[Zalmoxis]

A history of Klingon, the language

I found this article fascinating (and I'm not much of a Star Trek fan).

Klingon sentence structure is about as complex as it gets. Most people are familiar with the idea that verb endings can indicate person and number. In Spanish, the -o suffix on a verb like hablar (to speak) indicates a first-person singular subject (hablo—I speak) while the -amos suffix indicates a first-person plural subject (hablamos—we speak). But Klingon uses prefixes rather than suffixes, and instead of having six or seven of them, like most romance languages, it has 29.

Romanian uses suffixes (like Latin!). It's not too complicated once you get the hang of it. But I can't imagine 29 prefixes.

[rivka]

It's easy to make up complex rules for a language to one actually speaks on a day to day basis.

[Jonathon]

Except that a lot of Klingon's rules are drawn from typologically abnormal languages that really exist.

[Zalmoxis]

Right. It's like a linguist's version of the Silmarillion.  

[rivka]

Except that a lot of Klingon's rules are drawn from typologically abnormal languages that really exist.

I know that. But a real language might have a few such; Klingon has 5-10 times what any real language does. Neh?

[Annie Subjunctive]

Is it anymore complex than, say, Finnish?

[Annie Subjunctive]

As if that weren't complicated enough, Klingon also has a large set of suffixes. Attached to the end of the verbs SIQ and chep is the ending -jaj, which expresses "a desire or wish on the part of the speaker that something take place in the future." Klingon has 36 verb suffixes and 26 noun suffixes that express everything from negation to causality to possession to how willing a speaker is to vouch for the accuracy of what he says. By piling on these suffixes, one after the other, you can pack a lot of meaning on to a single word in Klingon—words like nuHegh'eghrupqa'moHlaHbe'law'lI'neS, which translates roughly to: They are apparently unable to cause us to prepare to resume honorable suicide (in progress).

Japanese does this too. And it's not actually that difficult, because once you learn the standard tack-on-the-end patterns, you can use them with any verb. I think it's a bit easier, actually, than having to use multiple words where word order matters, like in English.

[Jonathon]

Except that a lot of Klingon's rules are drawn from typologically abnormal languages that really exist.

I know that. But a real language might have a few such; Klingon has 5-10 times what any real language does. Neh?

*shrug*

I really know very little about Klingon, and I don't know if it's really possible to quantify such a thing.

[Jonathon]

Is it anymore complex than, say, Finnish?

It's really difficult to give any sort of absolute ranking to language complexity. Finnish may have a rather extensive inflectional system, but it has fairly simple phonology. But my understanding is that yes, it's a great deal more complex than Finnish.

[pooka]

I would need to know more about the tense and mood structure of Klingon to determine if the morphology were suspect.  Klingon was built by a linguist so I think he may have made choices that were outlandish but not ridiculous.  I thought it was great how they adopted changes to the language made in the course of filming.  I'm just basing this on the documentary that was a DVD extra in Wrath of Khan.  

[sweet clementine]

You know what my favorite part of this thread is?  The fact that my entry level of Russian has given me the basic knowledge to at least have some idea what you all are talking about.  Prefixation and suffixation all exist in Russian, as in the bajillion prefixes for verbs of motion.  I love when my edjucation comes in handy, even its just for a discussion on Klingon