[tlhIngan Hol] Number of speakers

[Will Martin]

I think that no one can have a good answer unless they know what the data is for.

My peak fluency came during an emotional conversation between myself, Qov, and Seqram (whom my English-based spell checker wants to rename Seagram), decades ago, where Qov expressed self-doubt and was reassured by the other two of us, with no temptation to break out of Klingon because of the emotional importance of the conversation. We all knew that the language could bear the weight.

I enjoyed being in the audience as Krankor and Seqram performed… I think it was called {baHwI’ ‘Iv?}, their version of “Who’s On First”, describing a ship’s crew, the members of whom all had names homophonic to question words. It was hilarious and exhilarating to watch the recognition of the long, long joke wash across the faces of the audience.

Singing in the Klingon barbershop quartet… I’m sure there hasn't been another, such that one might be pressed to ask, “Which Klingon barbershop quartet”… was a highlight of my life.

Meanwhile, you can’t take meaningful statistics if you don’t know the point the statistics is trying to make. Who wants to know this, and towards what end?

For me, the whole point of the Klingon language, is that it is living proof that anything can happen. There are a long string of things one would never have expected to happen that happened because Dr. Marc Okrand bumped into a friend from Paramount while waiting for something to happen while setting up for a live sub-captioning of an awards ceremony for TV all those years ago.

Someone should write a series of novels fictionalizing these highly unanticipated series of events.

I mean, Agatha Cristy made a long career out of stories about British people killing one another and lying in futile attempts to dodge the consequences of their actions. The Klingon novels would be MUCH more interesting.

pItlh

charghwI’ ‘utlh
(ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)




> On Jul 15, 2024, at 7:02 AM, Lieven L. Litaer via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org> wrote:
> 
> You are certainly right, it must be clear what a "fluent" speaker is.
> But it feels like Lawrence did not make that clear in his first
> interview when he made that statement.
> 
> In my opinion, a fluent speaker does not mean to be perfect or know each
> word from the book. I regard fluent in a way that one can have a basic
> conversation about general topics, and one is capable of understanding
> an explanation of an unknown word. Talking more technical (only for
> Klingon): Basics of grammar should be understood by 80% and the
> knowledge of vocabulary should be above 60%, excluding specialized
> vocabulary.  (most fluent speakers of English probably have never heard
> of puffins, so why should a Klingon speaker know the definition of a
> neSngech?)
> 
> Although it's interesting, I think that for the common knowledge of "the
> world", it is not important to make a difference between "speaking
> fluency" and "writing fluency". After all, it's very difficult to test
> that. I have encountered people with whom I could communicate in Klingon
> in a real life speed written chat, but speaking in person was very
> difficult. Still I see those as fluent speakers.
> 
> Talking numbers: The Facebook group tlhIngan Hol jatlhwI'pu' has almost
> 100 members. I suppose most of them do speak Klingon at least a little.
> Learn Klingon has 3,000 members, but those are learners.
> 
> Are there no other ways to find an official number of Klingon speakers?
> 
> --
> 
> Lieven L. Litaer
> aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany"
> https://tlhInganHol.com
> https://klingon.wiki/En/AliceInWonderland
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> tlhIngan-Hol at lists.kli.org
> http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

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