[tlhIngan Hol] Klingonaase in Klingon

[Ed Bailey]

John M. Ford made up klingonaase for his Star Trek novel The Final
Reflection about the same time Marc Okrand was creating tlhIngan Hol for
Star Trek III. The purposes and approaches of the two languages were worlds
apart. Ford was shooting from the hip, salting his English dialogue with
Klingon expressions he made up to suit his own aesthetics, which I, for
one, find appealing. Even with additional material in his follow-on novel
How Much for Just the Planet? and his contributions to the FASA Star Trek
games, and contributions by other authors, the vocabulary is very limited.
I don't believe he ever intended to devise a complete system of grammar,
but it's possible to guess some things about it, since his dialogue
contains different inflected forms of words.

The phonology of the language as he devised it is consistent. His
aesthetics shine through here, and I can't help comparing him to Tolkien in
this regard. Not all of the other authors who extended the language
appreciated this, so some of their additions fit poorly within klingonaase
phonology.

It's not a strict rule that authors do not use both Klingon languages in
the same work. How Much for Just the Planet? uses the word {cha'puj} for
dilithium.

There are klingonaase words that seem related to tlhIngan Hol words. The
word "sopra" (eater) is an obvious example. The FASA games introduce
several klingonaase words relating to death that all contain "mortas." The
similarity to Latin made me cringe until I realized that it's also similar
to {bortaS}, and revenge (among Klingons, at least) generally involves
death.

And of course the game of klin zha, which Ford devised for The Final
Reflection and fleshed out into a complete board game, has the tlhIngan Hol
name of {tlhInja}, and the novel's title is loosely translated as {neSlo'
tonSaw'}. So perhaps we can expect a thlIngan Hol name for the klingonaase
language.

~mIp'av



On Sunday, August 6, 2023, James Landau via tlhIngan-Hol <
tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org> wrote:
> I expected that there would be a tlhIngan Hol word for "Klingonaase"
because Klingonaase is a Klingon thing. Will Martin said that Klingonaase
and tlhIngan Hol were really two different universes; that was news to me.
My understanding of the matter, up to the point I asked this question, was
more like Steven Boozer's explanation; that some Klingons spoke tlhIngan
Hol, and some Klingons spoke Klingonaase, and there were a bunch of other
Klingon-spoken languages, too, with the prestige dialect shifting
(kathenodialectically?) with each new emperor and his/her dynasty. From
what I understood, Klingonaase was the prestige dialect before tlhIngan Hol
was.
>
> With all these new Klingon names for Terran languages (like "Breton" and
"Gujarati"), I thought Klingon could at least use a few more names for
/other/ languages of Kronos.
>
>
>
>>Message: 3
>>Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2023 13:04:54 +0200
>>From: "De'vID" <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com>
>>To: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol at kli.org>
>>Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] Klingonaase in Klingon
>>
>>On Tue, Aug 1, 2023 at 10:40?AM James Landau via tlhIngan-Hol <
>>tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org> wrote:
>>
>>> It just hit me: Why is there no tlhIngan Hol word for the Klingonaase
>>> language?
>>>
>>
>>mu'vam tu'lu' qatlh 'e' DapIH?
>
>
>
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