[tlhIngan Hol] Number of speakers

Mon Jul 15 15:58:33 PDT 2024

About a year ago or so, when I was a bit more active on the KLI Discord
server, I created a map of Klingon speakers, so as to know where most of
them are concentrated. I asked a lot of people on Discord what cities they
live in and also took some info from the Klingon language wiki. I also
either estimated people's level of Klingon myself or took their KLCP level,
putting people in 4 categories: "unknown", "beginner", "intermediate",
"advanced" (the latter of which is a bit broader than 'fluent', but my own
personal rule of thumb was, if the person has either KLCP 3 or can talk
really freely and (almost) naturally on the Discord video chat, then it's
'fluent' enough to be advanced). A very rough definition to go by... Ah,
and for "beginner" I didn't count total beginners, but those who already
have a small understanding and can speak or write basic (understandable)
Klingon.

For privacy reasons I don't think it's a good idea to share the link to the
map itself, so it's private. But it can serve as a rough guide of how many
more-or-less fluent more-or-less active speakers were around. Of course, by
now some might have lost their fluency, but others might have become more
fluent. And I'm sure I didn't catch all the speakers.

I counted, and have 40 people in the "fluent" category, I could imagine
there's perhaps 10 or so more of them that I didn't know about. So perhaps
40 to 50 is a good, rough estimate?
19 people are in the "intermediate" category. So you could say that thus
there are about 60 people (in my list!) you could actually have a
meaningful, longer live conversation with, only in Klingon. Again, maybe
there are 20 or so more people, so perhaps 80+ people who can actually
speak Klingon "quite well"?
And 36 people are in the "beginner" category. Here, surely there are many
more, thanks to Duolingo.

Since I often get the question about the number of speakers, I tell people
that it's hard to say but that there are maybe around 60 fluent speakers in
the world, and that it's very hard to say how many people "speak" Klingon
in any meaningful sense of the word, but "perhaps a few hundred". I think
at least the part about 40 to 60 more-or-less fluent speakers sounds quite
credible, doesn't it, given the quite vague definition.

That's my 2 darsek,
— André aka Vortarulo

Am Mo., 15. Juli 2024 um 23:59 Uhr schrieb Will Martin via tlhIngan-Hol <
tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org>:

> 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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