[tlhIngan Hol] Clarification on SIch

[De'vID]

On Mon, 22 Apr 2019 at 15:09, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:

> On 4/21/2019 11:21 PM, De'vID wrote:
>
> (TKD even allows such words to be written without a space, like
> *{poHqut}.) I'm much more likely to use {poH qut} than {jolvoy'} (since
> Discovery is currently on-air), and also be likelier to be understood. {poH
> qut} is Okrandian Klingon canon, even if it isn't Okrandian canon.
>
> "Okrandian Klingon canon" isn't a thing. If someone uses grammatically
> correct Klingon on Star Trek, that doesn't make it closer to Okrandian
> canon than if someone gets it wrong.
>
If it isn't a thing, I think it should be.

Here's my reason: one day, Marc Okrand will no longer be involved with the
Klingon language. (Kahless forbid that it be for any reason other than
because he chooses not to be, a long long time in the future.) When that
happens, Okrandian canon will be closed. There will be no more new words,
or even additional examples or clarifications of existing vocabulary.

Marc Okrand is actually officially retired from Klingon. He is not credited
in Star Trek: Into Darkness, even though he supplied the original Klingon
dialogue, as well as the new dialogue which resulted from having to
lip-match to the final edit. The credited Klingon language consultant in
that film was Britton Watkins (from whom I learned about Okrand's
involvement). Okrand confirmed his involvement in an interview with Lieven,
but his name isn't in the film. Similarly, he's not credited in the
augments arc in Star Trek: Enterprise. The only reason we know it came from
Okrand was because the writer of the episode "Affliction", Mike Sussmann,
said so somewhere.

Okrand's even less involved in Discovery: {Qov} (credited as Robyn Stewart)
wrote most of the lines (I believe with a few contributions from
{ghunchu'wI'}, i.e., Alan Anderson). He's going to become even less
involved in the shows and movies over time, even as he continues to be
involved with the Klingonist community by attending our events and
supplying us with information through email (or Facebook or whatever).

At some point, the amount of Star Trek canon material using "Okrandian
Klingon" (but not by Okrand) will exceed the amount of Klingon actually
produced by Okrand. If we could the paq'batlh, which is a considerable
amount of text, as coming from Okrand, then I don't think it's been
exceeded yet. However, newcomers to Klingon will most certainly be more
familiar with Discovery Klingon than Star Trek III Klingon, and this will
only become more so over time. Okrand's books are not sitting on store
shelves (or whatever the online equivalent is). The tapes are available
through an obsolete technology, though I hear that they may be available
through some streaming services, but in any case, it's probable that more
people know them from transcripts than audio. Newcomers also don't
currently have access to back issues of HolQeD, nor are the archives of the
defunct newsgroups to which Okrand used to post easily available.

I believe Okrand has prepared for this future by basically saying that any
Klingon which appears onscreen is real Klingon. That's the reason for the
dialects and archaic and ceremonial sentences. What is it that makes Okrand
the authority on the language of the Star Trek aliens named Klingons?
Originally, it was because he was hired by Paramount to create (or extend,
if you prefer) the language. If Okrand had been the inventor of some random
constructed language not associated with Star Trek, it's likely that none
of us would be studying his language. (There are, nowadays, hundreds of
constructed languages online that one could learn.) If someone else had
been hired other than Okrand, we'd be studying that person's language
instead. (I know one person who's alleged that they were almost hired in
place of Okrand.) If Paramount/CBS decides to hire someone else to continue
Okrand's work, why shouldn't that authority transfer over if certain
conditions are met?

Now, I can understand rejecting anything alleged to be Klingon but produced
by Paramount/CBS, but which doesn't fit into Okrand's scheme. Just because
someone says "forshak" on a Star Trek show, it doesn't make that word a
word in Okrand's Klingon. So why is Discovery different? I think the
difference is intent, and specifically the fact that someone is credited as
a "Klingon language consultant" on a Star Trek show (or movie). If some
Star Trek writers makes up something without any care for compatibility
with Okrand's work, that's one thing; but if someone credited as a Klingon
language consultant (i.e., Okrand's title) is deliberately extending
Okrand's work, I do see it as being of a very different nature than a
random writer who happens to write grammatically correct Klingon as a
by-product. There is, of course, a danger that in the future Paramount/CBS
(or whoever the rights holder is then) will hire a "Klingon consultant"
who, say, uses Bing and produces gibberish. I think the chances of that are
very low, though, because the bar has been raised so high (by Avatar, Game
of Thrones, and so on) for constructed languages in world-building. The
makers of Star Trek have a relationship with several expert Klingon
speakers.

I can also understand if someone says, "I want to adhere strictly only to
Klingon which comes from Okrand as canon." That's fine. I think that, in
the future, there will be two subcommunities of Klingonists, one which
holds that certain questions can *never* be resolved (i.e., the jury is
eternally out), and one which is happy to consider them resolved when they
appear to be resolved onscreen, like with the {SIch} example.

I will note that Okrand himself doesn't take "canon" as seriously as some
of us do, and is happy to have other people decide what ambiguous words
mean. One of the features that he's told me he appreciates about {boQwI'}
is that it includes usage examples, because he sometimes doesn't remember,
or perhaps doesn't even know, what was meant by an ambiguous definition.
When he uses a word, he wants to know how he's used it previously, and also
how it's been used in Star Trek novels and shows, as he doesn't like to
contradict an existing usage. (Other users have also requested that I add
all of the Klingon sentences spoken in Discovery into the {boQwI'} database
as entries, as one of the most popular uses of the app is to enter the
English subtitle to pull up the Klingon sentence. I've refrained from doing
so, partly because some people insist that I shouldn't put any non-canon
sentences as entries, but mostly for lack of time. But the opening of
T'Kuvma's speech is in there, for example, credited to {Qov}.)

> When trying to draw conclusions about what bits of Klingon that appear on
Star Trek, we don't get to pick and choose which bits count as canon and
which don't.

But don't we? I mean, choosing to treat only what comes from Okrand as
canon is still a choice.

-- 
De'vID
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