Hello, I know that there are several different ways of counting, and I know that the media have used this number frequently, but I have just noticed that after the new words from qep'a' (+148) and qepHom (+67), the total number of words has passed the 4,000 mark. For details, see the wiki page http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/NumberOfWords Just thought I'll let you know :-) -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonisch.de
I wonder how Klingon vocabulary stacks up against other artificial languages, especially those created and maintained by a single person. I doubt there are any Tolkien languages that come close. Atlantean didn’t get more than a few dozen words; enough for the movie, but there was no continuing interest, so far as I can tell. Other languages for other movies or TV series probably don’t compete meaningfully. Add that the affix structure expands on functional vocabulary significantly, making it difficult to actually count the words in Klingon because on one hand, there are words constructed out of affix combinations that we have never discovered yet (and don’t count yet), if you go for greatest number, or you could restrict the count to make {ghoj} and {ghojmoH} only count as one word because the second version is only a suffixed version of the first. Having a different English word for the two versions of the one Klingon word doesn’t really make it two different Klingon words. That has a parallel in American Sign Language. The English words for “lend” and “borrow” are only one sign in ASL, but you know which one the signer is intending because the directional motion of the sign informs you who is the lender and who is the borrower. The sign is just for the action that happens between a loaner and a borrower. It’s not two different actions. English artificially splits the action into two different words. We could easily eliminate one of the two words and not lose any expressive potential if we just remained consistent about who we identify as the subject and object. ASL has an entire class of directional and semi-directional signs. And Klingon has {-moH}, while English just has a LOT of words. Every time we get lazy about working with the words we have in English, we make up another one, like “guesstimate”. charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.
On Nov 22, 2019, at 6:23 AM, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
Still, they're not enough.
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On 11/22/2019 8:38 AM, Will Martin wrote:
I wonder how Klingon vocabulary stacks up against other artificial languages, especially those created and maintained by a single person.
I doubt there are any Tolkien languages that come close.
I've seen estimates that Quenya has around 2,000 words and Sindarin has around 1,200 — it's tough to count in part because Tolkien was constantly evolving his languages, and in part because he often worked with word stems rather than fully inflected words. But Elvish was never intended to be popularly spoken; it was the philological plaything of Tolkien. What it lacks in versatility it makes up for in depth. Tolkien invented entire etymologies and histories of his words, deriving how they changed from early Quendi forms into Queyna and Sindarin (and others). -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
Am 22.11.2019 um 14:38 schrieb Will Martin:
I wonder how Klingon vocabulary stacks up against other artificial languages, especially those created and maintained by a single person.
I'm pretty sure that Klingon stil is "the fastest growing language in the Galaxy", and the creator of that phrase never knew how right he would ever be with that.
{ghoj} and {ghojmoH} only count as one word because the second version is only a suffixed version of the first.
Add {ghojmoHwI'} to that list. :-) I once made a straight syllable count which reduzed it to less than 3,000 words, and eliminating all the star trek related vocabulary we even get closer to 2000. But on the other hand, if you respect that nearly any verb can get a -moH or a -wI', and nearly any noun can be combined with others, the true number of really available words, being canon or not, grows up to certainly more than twice 4,000 words or even more. That's the reason why Klingon can be used to translate many daily situations even though we don't have a single word for each thing. It was after TNK that I realized that Klingon seems to be intentionally constructed not having a word for each thing; many ideas are simply expressed using multiple words. As a summary, saying that Klingon has 4,000 words sounds less than what it really is usable for. -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.klingonisch.de http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/NumberOfWords
On 11/22/2019 9:19 AM, Lieven L. Litaer wrote:
{ghoj} and {ghojmoH} only count as one word because the second version is only a suffixed version of the first.
Add {ghojmoHwI'} to that list.
But are you questioning the "one-wordness" of these words because /learn, teach,/ and /teacher/ are considered different words in English (and maybe German), or because of some inherent reason to do so in Klingon? In English, we generally consider inflected forms to all be the same word, but not all affixes. /Teach, teaches, taught, teaching/ are all the same word in different forms. But /teacher,/ /teachable,/ /teacherly, teachability,/ /unteach, /and /teacherage/ are all considered different words, not to mention words you can coin on the spot with suffixes like /teacheresque, teacherlike,/ or /teachaholic./ And what about clitics, like /teacher's?/ // So what makes you decide that *-moH* and *-wI'* have special standing to form new words? Because they appear in /The Klingon Dictionary /with their own entries? That wasn't done because they're considered separate words; that was only done to make English–Klingon lookups easier: a new student looking for the word /teacher/ isn't going to look up the word /learn/ and then add a *-moH* to it; they're going to look for the word /teach./ What about *-ghach?* Is *naDHa'ghach* a distinctly different word than *naD? naD* is both a noun and a verb; the only thing the *-ghach* is doing is adding the *-Ha'* sense to the noun that already exists. What about the type 2 suffixes? Isn't *puvvIp */afraid to fly/ a rather different concept than *puv*/fly?/ Shouldn't it count as a separate word? Let's not be so certain we know how to count words in Klingon. When confronted with the question, it would be much better to clarify that one is talking about the count of word roots, and that you can add many affixes to form longer words. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
participants (4)
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Lieven L. Litaer -
mayqel qunen'oS -
SuStel -
Will Martin