Hi there, I'm writing an article about the frequent question "How long does it take to learn Klingon?". I know that many of us had a non-defined beginning or end of learning, but some really started at one day and ended up quite fluently a short time later. I know of our greek friend (who changes his signature name constantly) and DeSDu', who both got quite fluent in about one year, proving what I'm saying all along. So - who is here among you or can tell about former Klingonists who may confirm they learned the language in a similarly short period of time? By the way, I'm not talking about fluent speakers of which there are only five in the world. It's more about those who can do a basic conversation, but still without any dictionary help. -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/LearningTime
My experience is that learning Klingon takes about as much time and effort as learning any other new language that isn't related to one you already know (or perhaps less, given how straightforward the morphology is). For me, that means that the only meaningful metric for how long it's taken me to learn Klingon is how many hours I've spent actively communicating (either in person, or through a textual medium) in Klingon. Given the number of conversations I've had in Klingon, I'd say that my level is on par with the level I'd expect to have in, say, Georgian or Chinese after a similar amount of study. On Fri, Dec 07, 2018 at 08:55:54AM +0100, Lieven L. Litaer wrote:
Hi there,
I'm writing an article about the frequent question "How long does it take to learn Klingon?".
I know that many of us had a non-defined beginning or end of learning, but some really started at one day and ended up quite fluently a short time later. I know of our greek friend (who changes his signature name constantly) and DeSDu', who both got quite fluent in about one year, proving what I'm saying all along.
So - who is here among you or can tell about former Klingonists who may confirm they learned the language in a similarly short period of time?
By the way, I'm not talking about fluent speakers of which there are only five in the world. It's more about those who can do a basic conversation, but still without any dictionary help.
-- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/LearningTime _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
wa'DIch 'oH QInvam'e'. 'Italya' ngan jIH. loSwen tlhIngan Hol vIghojchoH. tlHingan Hol, Doychlan Hol je vIghojmeH, duolingo vIlo'... Well, at least that's my best effort. I have been lurking on the list for a couple of months now but I haven't been compelled to say anything yet. I appreciate the word of the day posting I cannot say I am at a level I can do a basic conversation yet, though I hope to get there. I also hope I wrote something sensible up there. I am still unsure abut the verb suffixes. Maybe I will be able to answer in another six months? One way or another! :) Learning the vocabulary is a big part of the difficulty, as you are probably all aware, but also learning how to cope with the missing prepositions appears to be challenging. On the other hand, the grammar, while unusual, is very regular, so that helps. I did an attempt at speech on the discord server a couple of weeks ago, but it still takes too long to build a phrase, and my vocabulary is too limited. I am curious myself to see if I succeed and how long will it take to get to a decent level of proficiency. Qapla'! Luciano On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 11:52 AM <kechpaja@kechpaja.com> wrote:
My experience is that learning Klingon takes about as much time and effort as learning any other new language that isn't related to one you already know (or perhaps less, given how straightforward the morphology is).
For me, that means that the only meaningful metric for how long it's taken me to learn Klingon is how many hours I've spent actively communicating (either in person, or through a textual medium) in Klingon. Given the number of conversations I've had in Klingon, I'd say that my level is on par with the level I'd expect to have in, say, Georgian or Chinese after a similar amount of study.
On Fri, Dec 07, 2018 at 08:55:54AM +0100, Lieven L. Litaer wrote:
Hi there,
I'm writing an article about the frequent question "How long does it take to learn Klingon?".
I know that many of us had a non-defined beginning or end of learning, but some really started at one day and ended up quite fluently a short time later. I know of our greek friend (who changes his signature name constantly) and DeSDu', who both got quite fluent in about one year, proving what I'm saying all along.
So - who is here among you or can tell about former Klingonists who may confirm they learned the language in a similarly short period of time?
By the way, I'm not talking about fluent speakers of which there are only five in the world. It's more about those who can do a basic conversation, but still without any dictionary help.
-- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/LearningTime _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
_______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
-- Luciano Montanaro Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. -- Douglas Adams
On Dec 7, 2018, at 9:00 AM, Luciano Montanaro <mikelima@gmail.com> wrote:
wa'DIch 'oH QInvam'e'. 'Italya' ngan jIH. loSwen tlhIngan Hol vIghojchoH. tlHingan Hol, Doychlan Hol je vIghojmeH, duolingo vIlo'...
qayajchu’! majQa’! "qhaq QInwIj wa’DIch ‘oH Qinvam’e’” bIjatlh ‘e’ vIchup, ‘ach QInlIj yajlaHchu’ vay’.
Daniel, thank you for the suggestion! {QInwIj wa'DIch 'oH QInvam'e'} allows to specify the possessive, which I couldn't add to the subject... Is it otherwise needed? I need more examples to study. anyway, my intention was to say "this is my first message to the mailing list". I simplified it to "this is my first message" because I had no idea how to say mailing list and I didn't want to check a dictionary. And I still couldn't find a place for "my". Is there a consensus for a translation of mailing list? I did a check now, and nothing came up. I see two possible way I could attempt a translation: {QIn mIr} or {QIn tetlh}. The second one is a more literal translation, but maybe the first one is a better metaphor. On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 4:07 PM Daniel Dadap <daniel@dadap.net> wrote:
On Dec 7, 2018, at 9:00 AM, Luciano Montanaro <mikelima@gmail.com> wrote:
wa'DIch 'oH QInvam'e'. 'Italya' ngan jIH. loSwen tlhIngan Hol vIghojchoH. tlHingan Hol, Doychlan Hol je vIghojmeH, duolingo vIlo'...
qayajchu’! majQa’!
"qhaq QInwIj wa’DIch ‘oH Qinvam’e’” bIjatlh ‘e’ vIchup, ‘ach QInlIj yajlaHchu’ vay’. _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
-- Luciano Montanaro Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. -- Douglas Adams
I believe anyone can learn klingon quite fast, as long as there are three things: 1. he *really* wants it 2. he's willing to work systematically 3. there are people who are willing to help him I wouldn't have learned a thing, if everyone here wouldn't have done everything to help me, something for which I'm truly grateful. There's no way someone could learn alone, not in a million years. Anyways.. In my opinion, the most difficult thing in klingon isn't learning the grammar, the vocabulary, the prefixes, or suffixes.. The most difficult thing, is freeing your mind from the habits of your native language, and stop trying to translate word-for-word, natural languages in klingon. ~ mayqel qunen'oS
Welcome to the group, Luciano. {QInwIj wa'DIch 'oH QInvam'e'} is exactly right for "this is my first message". As you've noticed, {-vam} "this" and {-vetlh} "that" have to be attached to a noun; they can't be used by themselves as a relative pronoun as in English, i.e. "This/That is ..." etc. While "this message is my first message" feels redundant in English, repeating the noun is common in Klingon. As for mailing list/listserve/newsgroup, etc., we've been using *{jabbI'IDghom} (literally "data transmission group") since the list was created - some twenty five years ago? Back then {QIn} "message" hadn't been revealed yet in KGT so we made do. Nowadays you sometimes see *{QIntetlh or *{QIntetlh}, but I really like your suggestion *{QIn mIr}. AFAIK Okrand/Maltz hasn't expressed his opinion. -- Voragh Ca'Non Master of the Klingons -----Original Message----- From: Luciano Montanaro {QInwIj wa'DIch 'oH QInvam'e'} allows to specify the possessive, which I couldn't add to the subject... Is it otherwise needed? I need more examples to study. Anyway, my intention was to say "this is my first message to the mailing list". I simplified it to "this is my first message" because I had no idea how to say mailing list and I didn't want to check a dictionary. And I still couldn't find a place for "my". Is there a consensus for a translation of mailing list? I did a check now, and nothing came up. I see two possible way I could attempt a translation: {QIn mIr} or {QIn tetlh}. The second one is a more literal translation, but maybe the first one is a better metaphor. On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 4:07 PM Daniel Dadap <daniel@dadap.net> wrote:
wa'DIch 'oH QInvam'e'. 'Italya' ngan jIH. loSwen tlhIngan Hol vIghojchoH. tlHingan Hol, Doychlan Hol je vIghojmeH, duolingo vIlo'...
qayajchu’! majQa’!
"qhaq QInwIj wa’DIch ‘oH Qinvam’e’” bIjatlh ‘e’ vIchup, ‘ach QInlIj yajlaHchu’ vay’. _______________________________________________
In my case, I think the answer depends on what you count as when I started. If you count the day that I brought home a copy of TKD and started asking all of my sixth grader friends “nuqDaq ‘oH puchpa’’e’”, the answer would be something like “25 years”. I stopped and started maybe three or four times over those years, and never put in more than a few weeks of half-hearted effort during that time. If you count when I started trying to translate dialog from Discovery (in particular the “‘Iv wInej” call and response thing) to help me understand better, that started about a year ago, and it took maybe six months from that time until I was able to hold on a conversation without the aid of reference materials. Duolingo helped a lot, as did the. KLI’s online course, and the various Memrise decks for vocabulary; I started Duolingo a couple of days after the Klingon course launched; according to Duolingo I have a 260 day streak there. Unfortunately, to date I’ve only had one opportunity to have a conversation in person, when DeSDu’ passed through Austin on his way across the country about four months ago or so. We’ve chatted on voice chat a couple of times on Discord as well, and I’ve chatted with De’vID on Discord once. And of course I’ve chatted with many people textually on Discord. I think the easy access to people to have conversations with despite not knowing any local speakers has helped a lot for sure, as compared to my previous aborted attempts at learning Klingon. I agree with kechpaja that Klingon doesn’t really seem any different than any other language that you’re unfamiliar with as far as how easy it is to learn.
On Dec 7, 2018, at 1:55 AM, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius@gmx.de> wrote:
Hi there,
I'm writing an article about the frequent question "How long does it take to learn Klingon?".
I know that many of us had a non-defined beginning or end of learning, but some really started at one day and ended up quite fluently a short time later. I know of our greek friend (who changes his signature name constantly) and DeSDu', who both got quite fluent in about one year, proving what I'm saying all along.
So - who is here among you or can tell about former Klingonists who may confirm they learned the language in a similarly short period of time?
By the way, I'm not talking about fluent speakers of which there are only five in the world. It's more about those who can do a basic conversation, but still without any dictionary help.
-- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/LearningTime _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org
On Fri, 7 Dec 2018 at 08:56, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius@gmx.de> wrote:
Hi there,
I'm writing an article about the frequent question "How long does it take to learn Klingon?".
I know that many of us had a non-defined beginning or end of learning, but some really started at one day and ended up quite fluently a short time later. I know of our greek friend (who changes his signature name constantly) and DeSDu', who both got quite fluent in about one year, proving what I'm saying all along.
So - who is here among you or can tell about former Klingonists who may confirm they learned the language in a similarly short period of time?
By the way, I'm not talking about fluent speakers of which there are only five in the world. It's more about those who can do a basic conversation, but still without any dictionary help.
This probably isn't what you're looking for, and depends heavily on what you mean by a "basic conversation". When I started learning Klingon, I didn't do so by myself. I started with a small group of friends, so we could use it as a code. I'm the only one who went to the effort of actually learning the entire language in the end. However, one of my friends learned enough from the lines in TKD and the two cassettes (Conversation Klingon and Power Klingon) that she could "converse" with me by mixing-and-matching sentence fragments from those sources. That's right: she spoke Klingon purely as remixes of existing canon sentences, like a Wreck-Gar who listened only to Klingon-language tapes. The process took only a couple of months (basically one school term). Granted, she couldn't compose entirely original sentences, and a fluent Klingon speaker listening in on our "conversations" would understand all the words, but not the substance, because we had our own invented slang and inside jokes that only we understood. (We had given aliases to places and people we knew after places and characters in Star Trek, of course.) However, the fact that this is possible makes me believe that one could get up to a "tourist" level of Klingon (e.g., "where is the [landmark]?", "how much?", "when?", "how do I [perform a task]?") in a matter of months, if not weeks, just by repeatedly listening to the tapes. ("Where is the bathroom?" is, of course, one of the sentences in TKD that she could remix, and counting and time are also covered in the cassettes.) I asked her years later how much she remembered, and she blurted out a fairly complex sentence which I'm not going to say because it's an inside joke, but it had the structure "noun-possessive-locative prefix-verb". -- De'vID
On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 2:56 AM Lieven L. Litaer <levinius@gmx.de> wrote:
So - who is here among you or can tell about former Klingonists who may confirm they learned the language in a similarly short period of time?
I first obtained a copy of The Klingon Dictionary in December 1994. I didn't start treating the language as something to learn until I discovered the tlhIngan-Hol mailing list in January. That's what I count as the beginning of my study of Klingon. After a month, I felt confident enough to translate poetry. I was wrong, very wrong. Two months after I started, I thought I understood Klingon grammar well enough to explain it to others. I was close. At the end of the third month, I had almost enough vocabulary to be able to pass as fluent...for a couple of sentences. After four months, I was able to follow simple conversations with occasional trips to the dictionary. Six months into my study, I knew enough words to participate in simple conversations without resort to the dictionary. I still made plenty of silly grammatical errors though. Then I started using a computerized lookup tool. My progress stalled until I stopped. -- ghunchu'wI'
participants (8)
-
Alan Anderson -
Daniel Dadap -
De'vID -
kechpaja＠kechpaja.com -
Lieven L. Litaer -
Luciano Montanaro -
mayqel qunenoS -
Steven Boozer