[tlhIngan Hol] hard truths about the future

[Tim Stoffel]

The other possibility is that Paramount will turn to this community.
Although there may not be (at least at first)a point man, the
collective brain trust of this community, along with the massive canon
and corpus that Klingon possesses will ensure that true-to-form Klingon
will continue to be created.

The Na'vi community has already formed a committee that can create and
vet suggestions for new vocabulary. Language creator Paul Frommer has
final say over what the committee suggests to him, and everyone on the
community honors Dr. Frommer with great reverence. So although Na;vi
has a ways to go to catch up with Klingon, at least the Na'vi folks
have a way to keep the language going and growing should anything
happen to Dr. Frommer.

Finally, languages that are in active use grow and change with time;
this is not untrue of Klingon (and Na'vi). New leadership isn't
something to necessarily fear. These commonly used conlangs will need
to change to adapt to new circumstances and environments. Absolute
canonical purity is not as important as one thinks, although generally
sticking to the canon is still important. The discussions, dissensions
and conflicts worked through on this list will guide future expert
Klingonists to be able to turn out new material, and train the
generation of Klingonists beyond them. Don't doubt for a minute that
what we are doing here is important for both the current use of, and
the future of the language.

Tim Stoffel

--

-----Original Message-----
From: De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com>
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol at kli.org
To: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol at kli.org>
Cc: tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org
Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] hard truths about the future
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2021 10:32:16 +0100



I think the likeliest scenario is that Paramount/CBS (or whoever the
rights owner is at the time) will hire someone to continue to supply
Klingon for the movies and shows. (Indeed, people other than Okrand are
already doing this, though they are not producing anything "beyond
canon" at the moment.) If they hire the same person over and over
(which is not a given), and that person were to be interested in
expanding Klingon (which is also not a given), then that person will
effectively become the new authority on Klingon. After all, the reason
that we treat Okrand's work as being authoritative is partly because
it's "official", and not just because he invented it. (If he had
invented the Klingon language on his own as a hobby with no connection
to Star Trek, I doubt any of us would be speaking it. He'd also worked
on other languages like Atlantean, which have basically no community
around them. The reason Klingon is popular is because of its connection
to Star Trek.)

It may be that some of the "old guard" who have been around since
forever won't accept another authority, but if Paramount/CBS continues
to produce Klingon-language media (not a given), and some new person
was working on it, then anyone who is new to Klingon (and thus don't
especially have an attachment to Okrand's work) would just accept that
person's work as "canon".

While Maltz-is-living-in-Okrand's-basement is a cute joke, we don't
really *need* the fiction of Maltz. If a new Star Trek movie or show
came out with new Klingon words, and the person who worked on it told
us what they meant, what does it matter whether or not they said that
the information came through Maltz? Okrand himself hasn't consistently
used the Maltz backstory when revealing new information.