[tlhIngan Hol] learning time

[Daniel Dadap]

In my case, I think the answer depends on what you count as when I started. If you count the day that I brought home a copy of TKD and started asking all of my sixth grader friends “nuqDaq ‘oH puchpa’’e’”, the answer would be something like “25 years”. I stopped and started maybe three or four times over those years, and never put in more than a few weeks of half-hearted effort during that time.

If you count when I started trying to translate dialog from Discovery (in particular the “‘Iv wInej” call and response thing) to help me understand better, that started about a year ago, and it took maybe six months from that time until I was able to hold on a conversation without the aid of reference materials. Duolingo helped a lot, as did the. KLI’s online course, and the various Memrise decks for vocabulary; I started Duolingo a couple of days after the Klingon course launched; according to Duolingo I have a 260 day streak there.

Unfortunately, to date I’ve only had one opportunity to have a conversation in person, when DeSDu’ passed through Austin on his way across the country about four months ago or so. We’ve chatted on voice chat a couple of times on Discord as well, and I’ve chatted with De’vID on Discord once. And of course I’ve chatted with many people textually on Discord. I think the easy access to people to have conversations with despite not knowing any local speakers has helped a lot for sure, as compared to my previous aborted attempts at learning Klingon.

I agree with kechpaja that Klingon doesn’t really seem any different than any other language that you’re unfamiliar with as far as how easy it is to learn.

> On Dec 7, 2018, at 1:55 AM, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi there,
> 
> I'm writing an article about the frequent question "How long does it take to learn Klingon?".
> 
> I know that many of us had a non-defined beginning or end of learning, but some really started at one day and ended up quite fluently a short time later. I know of our greek friend (who changes his signature name constantly) and DeSDu', who both got quite fluent in about one year, proving what I'm saying all along.
> 
> So - who is here among you or can tell about former Klingonists who may confirm they learned the language in a similarly short period of time?
> 
> By the way, I'm not talking about fluent speakers of which there are only five in the world. It's more about those who can do a basic conversation, but still without any dictionary help.
> 
> -- 
> Lieven L. Litaer
> aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany"
> http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/LearningTime
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