The other possibility is that Paramount will turn to this community. Although there may not be (at least at first)a point man, the collective brain trust of this community, along with the massive canon and corpus that Klingon possesses will ensure that true-to-form Klingon will continue to be created. The Na'vi community has already formed a committee that can create and vet suggestions for new vocabulary. Language creator Paul Frommer has final say over what the committee suggests to him, and everyone on the community honors Dr. Frommer with great reverence. So although Na;vi has a ways to go to catch up with Klingon, at least the Na'vi folks have a way to keep the language going and growing should anything happen to Dr. Frommer. Finally, languages that are in active use grow and change with time; this is not untrue of Klingon (and Na'vi). New leadership isn't something to necessarily fear. These commonly used conlangs will need to change to adapt to new circumstances and environments. Absolute canonical purity is not as important as one thinks, although generally sticking to the canon is still important. The discussions, dissensions and conflicts worked through on this list will guide future expert Klingonists to be able to turn out new material, and train the generation of Klingonists beyond them. Don't doubt for a minute that what we are doing here is important for both the current use of, and the future of the language. Tim Stoffel -- -----Original Message----- From: De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org To: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@kli.org> Cc: tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] hard truths about the future Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2021 10:32:16 +0100 I think the likeliest scenario is that Paramount/CBS (or whoever the rights owner is at the time) will hire someone to continue to supply Klingon for the movies and shows. (Indeed, people other than Okrand are already doing this, though they are not producing anything "beyond canon" at the moment.) If they hire the same person over and over (which is not a given), and that person were to be interested in expanding Klingon (which is also not a given), then that person will effectively become the new authority on Klingon. After all, the reason that we treat Okrand's work as being authoritative is partly because it's "official", and not just because he invented it. (If he had invented the Klingon language on his own as a hobby with no connection to Star Trek, I doubt any of us would be speaking it. He'd also worked on other languages like Atlantean, which have basically no community around them. The reason Klingon is popular is because of its connection to Star Trek.) It may be that some of the "old guard" who have been around since forever won't accept another authority, but if Paramount/CBS continues to produce Klingon-language media (not a given), and some new person was working on it, then anyone who is new to Klingon (and thus don't especially have an attachment to Okrand's work) would just accept that person's work as "canon". While Maltz-is-living-in-Okrand's-basement is a cute joke, we don't really *need* the fiction of Maltz. If a new Star Trek movie or show came out with new Klingon words, and the person who worked on it told us what they meant, what does it matter whether or not they said that the information came through Maltz? Okrand himself hasn't consistently used the Maltz backstory when revealing new information.