[tlhIngan Hol] ghoj

[Will Martin]

We recently celebrated recognizing that we’ve collected a vocabulary of more than 5,000 words. The small, truthful comment that not everybody agrees on what constitutes a word to be counted set me on one of my sprees of excessive thought. Overthinking things is a core part of my identity.

{ghoj} “learn” is obviously a root word. {ghojmoH} “teach” is obviously derivative, but since the English gloss is a different word, most people count it as a distinct word worth counting. Similarly, there’s {ghojwI’} “student, and {ghojmoHwI’} “teacher”, and while we’re at it, {ghojmoHwI’’a’} “professor”, thought that doesn’t count because it hasn’t made it into the lexicon, despite being pretty obvious.

Hmmm. {ghojmoHwI’Hom} “teaching assistant”? Okay, I’m not talking about word that count anymore. This is a word most would understand, regardless of its absence from boQwI’ or equivalent personal lexicons.

What about {ghojwI’Hom} to describe someone who, as a hobby, is interested in something enough to self-teach from available materials, but not interested enough to take formal classes, like a student guitarist, self-teaching from a How To book? Maybe some of the people here are students of this sort of the Klingon language.

Then, what of {ghojwI’’a’}? I suspect that more than a few of us on this list qualify, as students who have exhibited an irrational zeal for learning the Klingon language. Of course, the general populace thinks that ANY effort made to learn the Klingon language is irrational, but putting that aside, I think that people like Qov, who learned the entire vocabulary to a level of instant recall, at the peak of her talents certainly qualified as {ghojwI’a’}, before she turned her efforts toward teaching, and then, I don’t know, writing volumes in Klingon, then shifting toward piloting airplanes, which, unlike speaking Klingon earned her actual money.

HoD Qanqor was certainly {ghojwI’’a’ wa’DIch}, and there have been an impressive number of us to later deserve this label. We celebrate our teachers, but the culture and society of Klingon speakers would not exist without our great learners.

I’m not going to try to list everyone who qualifies, since many who have done so early on have disappeared {ghojpu’’a’pu’?} and new ones have arisen on platforms I don’t participate in. I also don’t want to insult anyone by accidental omission.

You know who you are.

Nerd pride.

I started to say that we need an equivalent of the rainbow flag, but I guess we already have the KLI logo. Those who are into dressing up, but not speaking the language have the original trefoil. I guess that’s covered.

Then there’s the term BG — Beginners’ Grammarian — ghojchoHwI’pu’ pab po’?

pItlh

charghwI’ ‘utlh
(ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)




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