<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, 22 Apr 2019 at 15:09, SuStel <<a href="mailto:sustel@trimboli.name" target="_blank">sustel@trimboli.name</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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<div class="gmail-m_5438890835653713828gmail-m_-3675364680363847844moz-cite-prefix">On 4/21/2019 11:21 PM, De'vID wrote:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"><div>(TKD even allows such words to be written without a space,
like *{poHqut}.) I'm much more likely to use {poH qut} than
{jolvoy'} (since Discovery is currently on-air), and also be
likelier to be understood. {poH qut} is Okrandian Klingon canon,
even if it isn't Okrandian canon.</div>
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<p>"Okrandian Klingon canon" isn't a thing. If someone uses
grammatically correct Klingon on Star Trek, that doesn't make it
closer to Okrandian canon than if someone gets it wrong.</p></div>
</blockquote></div><div>If it isn't a thing, I think it should be.</div><div><br></div><div>Here's my reason: one day, Marc Okrand will no longer be involved with the Klingon language. (Kahless forbid that it be for any reason other than because he chooses not to be, a long long time in the future.) When that happens, Okrandian canon will be closed. There will be no more new words, or even additional examples or clarifications of existing vocabulary.</div><div><br></div><div>Marc Okrand is actually officially retired from Klingon. He is not credited in Star Trek: Into Darkness, even though he supplied the original Klingon dialogue, as well as the new dialogue which resulted from having to lip-match to the final edit. The credited Klingon language consultant in that film was Britton Watkins (from whom I learned about Okrand's involvement). Okrand confirmed his involvement in an interview with Lieven, but his name isn't in the film. Similarly, he's not credited in the augments arc in Star Trek: Enterprise. The only reason we know it came from Okrand was because the writer of the episode "Affliction", Mike Sussmann, said so somewhere.</div><div><br></div><div>Okrand's even less involved in Discovery: {Qov} (credited as Robyn Stewart) wrote most of the lines (I believe with a few contributions from {ghunchu'wI'}, i.e., Alan Anderson). He's going to become even less involved in the shows and movies over time, even as he continues to be involved with the Klingonist community by attending our events and supplying us with information through email (or Facebook or whatever).</div><div><br></div><div>At some point, the amount of Star Trek canon material using "Okrandian Klingon" (but not by Okrand) will exceed the amount of Klingon actually produced by Okrand. If we could the paq'batlh, which is a considerable amount of text, as coming from Okrand, then I don't think it's been exceeded yet. However, newcomers to Klingon will most certainly be more familiar with Discovery Klingon than Star Trek III Klingon, and this will only become more so over time. Okrand's books are not sitting on store shelves (or whatever the online equivalent is). The tapes are available through an obsolete technology, though I hear that they may be available through some streaming services, but in any case, it's probable that more people know them from transcripts than audio. Newcomers also don't currently have access to back issues of HolQeD, nor are the archives of the defunct newsgroups to which Okrand used to post easily available.</div><div><br></div><div>I believe Okrand has prepared for this future by basically saying that any Klingon which appears onscreen is real Klingon. That's the reason for the dialects and archaic and ceremonial sentences. What is it that makes Okrand the authority on the language of the Star Trek aliens named Klingons? Originally, it was because he was hired by Paramount to create (or extend, if you prefer) the language. If Okrand had been the inventor of some random constructed language not associated with Star Trek, it's likely that none of us would be studying his language. (There are, nowadays, hundreds of constructed languages online that one could learn.) If someone else had been hired other than Okrand, we'd be studying that person's language instead. (I know one person who's alleged that they were almost hired in place of Okrand.) If Paramount/CBS decides to hire someone else to continue Okrand's work, why shouldn't that authority transfer over if certain conditions are met?</div><div><br></div><div>Now, I can understand rejecting anything alleged to be Klingon but produced by Paramount/CBS, but which doesn't fit into Okrand's scheme. Just because someone says "forshak" on a Star Trek show, it doesn't make that word a word in Okrand's Klingon. So why is Discovery different? I think the difference is intent, and specifically the fact that someone is credited as a "Klingon language consultant" on a Star Trek show (or movie). If some Star Trek writers makes up something without any care for compatibility with Okrand's work, that's one thing; but if someone credited as a Klingon language consultant (i.e., Okrand's title) is deliberately extending Okrand's work, I do see it as being of a very different nature than a random writer who happens to write grammatically correct Klingon as a by-product. There is, of course, a danger that in the future Paramount/CBS (or whoever the rights holder is then) will hire a "Klingon consultant" who, say, uses Bing and produces gibberish. I think the chances of that are very low, though, because the bar has been raised so high (by Avatar, Game of Thrones, and so on) for constructed languages in world-building. The makers of Star Trek have a relationship with several expert Klingon speakers.</div><div><br></div><div>I can also understand if someone says, "I want to adhere strictly only to Klingon which comes from Okrand as canon." That's fine. I think that, in the future, there will be two subcommunities of Klingonists, one which holds that certain questions can *never* be resolved (i.e., the jury is eternally out), and one which is happy to consider them resolved when they appear to be resolved onscreen, like with the {SIch} example.</div><div><br></div><div>I will note that Okrand himself doesn't take "canon" as seriously as some of us do, and is happy to have other people decide what ambiguous words mean. One of the features that he's told me he appreciates about {boQwI'} is that it includes usage examples, because he sometimes doesn't remember, or perhaps doesn't even know, what was meant by an ambiguous definition. When he uses a word, he wants to know how he's used it previously, and also how it's been used in Star Trek novels and shows, as he doesn't like to contradict an existing usage. (Other users have also requested that I add all of the Klingon sentences spoken in Discovery into the {boQwI'} database as entries, as one of the most popular uses of the app is to enter the English subtitle to pull up the Klingon sentence. I've refrained from doing so, partly because some people insist that I shouldn't put any non-canon sentences as entries, but mostly for lack of time. But the opening of T'Kuvma's speech is in there, for example, credited to {Qov}.)</div><div><br></div><div>> When trying to draw conclusions about what bits of Klingon that appear on Star Trek, we don't get to pick and choose which bits count as canon and which don't.</div><div><br></div><div>But don't we? I mean, choosing to treat only what comes from Okrand as canon is still a choice.</div><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail-m_5438890835653713828gmail_signature">De'vID</div></div></div></div>