In the Land of INVENTED LANGUAGES (36 page)

And very, very difficult for the average English speaker to learn. But neither the mind-bending complexity of putting Klingon sentences together nor the uvula-twisting chore of articulating Klingon words prevents the Klingonists from studying, speaking, and writing the language. In fact, the challenge is part of the attraction, maybe the main one. Learning the Klingon language, though mocked as the most absurd thing a person could do, is what makes Klingon speakers feel above the usual
Star Trek
fandom. Lawrence Schoen, the head of the KLI, recalls how after an article about the Klingon language appeared on the front page of the lifestyle section of the
Chicago Tribune
, “memberships poured in from people who thought this was all about playing Klingon. You know, the foreheads, the costumes. But when they found out what we really did, they couldn't hack it. It was too much work.” Those who can hack it feel a haughty pride in their linguistic accomplishments, despite the fact that no one who hasn't attempted to hack it can understand what they have to be proud of. The difficulty of the language keeps it from being just another part of the costume. The ones who end up sticking with it are in it for the language—and the cachet, the respect, that comes (from however small a group) with showing that you can master it. Anyone can wear a rubber forehead, but the language certification pins must be earned.

When I arrived at the Klingon conference in Arizona, I didn't know a thing about
Star Trek
. I hadn't seen any of the movies. I couldn't name one Klingon character from the show. But I knew one thing for sure: I wanted one of those pins.

What Are
They Doing?

I
n 1999, the satirical paper the
Onion
ran a story under the headline “Klingon Speakers Now Outnumber Navajo Speakers.” This is absolutely not true, but it would have been true had they picked nearly any other Native American language. How many speakers are there? It depends on your definition of “speaker.”
The Klingon Dictionary
, written by Okrand and licensed by Paramount, has sold more than 300,000 copies of its two editions. But a dictionary buyer does not a speaker make. There are probably more than two thousand people who have learned to use Klingon in some way. Many of them have learned a word or two. Others have composed poems, stories, or wedding vows in Klingon without regard to the grammar, simply by popping dictionary words into English sentences. They haven't done the work. They count only as dabblers, not speakers. At least a few
hundred, however, have done the work and are pretty good at written Klingon.

But what about speakers in the sense of people who can carry on a spontaneous live conversation in Klingon? How many of them are there? I would say, oh, twenty or so. Maybe thirty.

This estimate doesn't sound very exciting, but considering the difficulty of the grammar, and the relatively small vocabulary size, it's amazing that spontaneous conversations happen at all. The annual
qep'a'
is one of the few places where such conversations occur.

On the first afternoon of the conference, I stepped timidly into the over-air-conditioned lobby of the hotel with Mark Shoulson. He and I had spent the long flight to Phoenix going over the finer points of Klingon colloquialisms, but I wasn't sure I was ready to put them to use. I saw a small group gathered around a table, PalmPilots in hand. They were conversing in Klingon, haltingly, and with much use of their PalmPilot dictionaries, but nonetheless getting their points across. No one was in costume. Mark introduced me to the group, and I smiled and waved weakly, not sure what to say or how to say it. I sat and listened for a while. I was privately pleased when I understood my first spoken Klingon sentence: “
Ha'DIbaH vISopbe
'” (Animal I-it-eat-not)—“I'm a vegetarian.” Not a very Klingon sentiment.

I wasn't impressed with the fluency level of the conversation. It seemed that nearly every sentence was repeated two or three times to the request of “
nuq
?” (What?). But because people were out of practice and the group was of mixed skill level, this particular conversation wasn't the best display of Klingon-speaking potential. I saw that later, as we walked over radiating sidewalks to a Mexican restaurant for the opening banquet, when I witnessed Captain Krankor and his girlfriend holding hands and chatting in Klingon, sans PalmPilots.

Captain Krankor (also known as Qanqor) is a software engineer and musician from Massachusetts known as Rich when he's in regular clothes. When he wears his Klingon costume, he is Krankor, and he only speaks Klingon. In both of his personas he is round and compact, with a large, appreciative laugh that shows off his dimples. His costume includes a travel guitar, on which he might strum a few bars of his translations of the Beatles or the Stones, or lead the group in the Klingon anthem “taHjaj wo'” (May the Empire Continue), a stirring and complex round of his own composition. He is known for being the first speaker of Klingon, and he speaks as smoothly as one could speak a language with so many glottal stops—especially when he speaks with his incredibly fluent girlfriend, Agnieszka, a delicate, shy linguist from Poland.

But no matter how well one speaks Klingon, he admits, it isn't easy to “take the vow,” as the Klingonists call it when they make the commitment to speak only Klingon. None of the conference goers took a vow that lasted for the
entire
weekend. Some, like Krankor, attached the vow to the costume, and wore the costume only for certain events. Daniel, a newspaper deliveryman from Colorado, told me a little sheepishly that he was postponing putting on his costume, because then he couldn't participate as much in the general socializing, which takes place in English. Others, like Scott, a magician from Florida who, before he discovered the language, “couldn't give a shit about
Star Trek
” didn't have a costume and simply declared they were taking the vow for a particular day.

Scott and I were the early risers of the group, and the first morning we chatted at breakfast (in English). He answered some questions I had about vocabulary, which he was well qualified to do as the current Beginner's Grammarian, an official title at the
KLI for the person who responds to newcomers' questions on the e-mail lists. Having such a title is a mark of distinction and an endorsement of language skill. He said he was having a great time so far, and he was really hoping Marc Okrand would make an appearance, as he sometimes does at the
qep'a's
. “I'm starstruck,” he said with a wide smile. “I brought a new copy of
The Klingon Dictionary
for him to sign.”

The second morning, when I greeted Scott by the coffee machine, he would only speak to me in Klingon, having taken the vow for that day. Luckily, someone had beamed me a PalmPilot dictionary at lunch the previous day, so I had the means to understand him in a painfully pause-filled kind of way. As the rest of the group came down from their rooms, he gained more game conversational partners and I gained some interpreters, the most skilled of whom was my guide, Mark, who through the rest of the weekend made it a point to keep me included with unobtrusive simultaneous translation in a low, gentle voice.

Mark's translation was also for the benefit of Louise, another beginner who became my study partner. Louise, a French-Canadian ad copywriter in her late forties, had been to three previous
qep'a's
and had failed the first certification exam each time. She was going to try again. Unlike most of the other attendees, she didn't seem to be into computers, games, science fiction, or even language. She went for a run every morning and then smoked a cigarette. She had short hair and tomboy clothes, but she traveled with a pile of stuffed animals, and when I saw them on the chair in her hotel room, all propped upright like a matinee audience, I asked her, a little embarrassed on her behalf, “Are they animals you've collected since your childhood?” “No,” she answered, not embarrassed in the least, “well, you might say my extended childhood.”

I still don't fully understand why she wanted to learn Klingon, and I asked her more than a few times, trying to make sense of her response: “When I saw
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
, I saw those boots, yeah? In the Klingon costume? And I said, ‘Wow! I want to make those boots.’ I thought maybe Japanese Klingon speakers would love to buy them. So I started to learn Klingon.” As far as I know, there are no Japanese Klingon speakers, but she didn't seem worried about this. As for the boot-making part of her plan, she had apprenticed herself to a cobbler in Montreal.

Enigma though she was, Louise was relaxed and likable, and the only other person at the conference besides me who would have a drink at meals. We almost always sat next to each other, so Mark could translate for us and so we could study together.

And I was studying constantly, feverishly. Until I arrived at the
qep'a'
, I thought I was done studying. I had scored perfectly on my postal-course lessons. I was confident, bigheaded even. After all, I was a
linguist
(and we don't get many opportunities to feel superior). I was already familiar with the grammatical concepts. I memorized the affixes and about forty words of core vocabulary. I leaned back and crossed my arms over my puffed-up chest.

The language has a lexicon of about three thousand words, and there's no way anyone knows all of them without peeking, or so I thought. The words are totally arbitrary and must simply be memorized one by one. You don't get any help from cognates (for example, German
Milch
for English “milk”) or international words (for example,
informazione
), and you must deal with words for such things as dilithium crystal (
cha'pujqut
) and transporter ionizer unit (
jolvoy'
). How could anyone be expected to remember all of them? I assumed that for the first test, the smattering of words in the postal-course exercises would be sufficient.

Soon after I arrived in Phoenix, I found out that the first test was “beginner's” level because you were expected to know “only 500 words.” I frantically made five hundred flash cards on tiny slips of paper, and carried them around with me to every activity and every meal, cramming and cramming.

If you have a sharp eye and an active imagination, Okrand does offer a narrow foothold into the lexicon. The word for “fish,” for example, is
ghotI'
. If you get the reference to the George Bernard Shaw anecdote about the absurdity of English spelling (“gh” as in “tough,” “o” as in “women,” “ti” as in “nation” = “fish”), you remember this word. The word for “guitar” is
leSpal
(parsed Les Paul). Other associations are simpler, but just as memorable. The word for “pain” is 'oy'. “Hangover” is
'uH
. This wink-wink tendency in the vocabulary, however, is no more than a faint undercurrent and can't be relied upon as a study aid.

Unless, like me, you never met a mnemonic you didn't like. In order to memorize five hundred words in three days, I spun my mind into a frenzy of associative madness:
waq
—“shoe,” shoes are for walking;
Qob
—“danger,” cobras are dangerous;
wIgh
—“genius,” Einstein's hair looked like a wig;
rur
—“resemble,” the first letter resembles the last letter;
ngeD
—“easy,” ironic because “ng” and “D” are some of the harder sounds to pronounce. But careful not to get it mixed up with
Qatlh
—“difficult” (not ironic) because “Q” and “tlh” are the most difficult to pronounce.

Flip, flip, flip. The flash cards flashed. In my room at night, while everyone else hung out at the pool, I sorted them into piles of ten, only moving on to the next pile when I had one fully memorized. In the lobby, after the sing-along and before Klingon Pictionary, I had people quiz me. At the Old Spaghetti Factory, while we waited for a table for eighteen, I badgered Louise, who, frankly, didn't seem to be studying hard enough, into reciting my
intra-Klingon word associations with me (“
wIv, tIv, yIv
”—“choose, enjoy, chew”—I
choose to enjoy to chew
).

By the afternoon of the test, I was feeling burned-out. My head was swimming with what were essentially useless nonsense words. And some of the Klingons were getting on my nerves. Did they have to be so weird? Did they have to be so weird
in public’?
At a small Thai restaurant that we practically took over during the lunch rush, I shrank in my seat as an exceptionally polite waitress patiently guessed at what my costumed tablemates were pointing to when they insisted on giving their orders in Klingon. I wanted to meet her gaze and apologize with my eyes, but she was too rattled by the experience to look my way. Later, as the group made its rubber-foreheaded, vinyl-gloved, wool-caped, guttural-Klingon-speaking way toward the door (with me ineffectively hiding behind my hair), I saw a table of cute teenage girls mouthing a silent chorus of “Oh … my … God!” I have to say, it stung.

Marc Okrand didn't make it to the
qep'd
that year. Scott wouldn't get his dictionary signed. But the greater disappointment was that no new words would be handed down. At previous
qep'a's
Okrand had come through with new vocabulary. Some words he created in response to lists of requests. (“You can't ask for anything impolite,” my guide, Mark Shoulson, told me, “but one year we did get the word for ‘snot.’”) Others were created on the spot—one year during the Klingon “Hokey Pokey,” when it came to Okrand's turn, he said, “You put your
Sa'Hut
in …” Everyone stopped for a mental dictionary scan, thinking, “Do I know this word?” Finally they looked to Okrand, and he turned and stuck his backside in. And that's how Klingon got the word for “tush” (
Sa'Hut
, incidentally, is
tuchis
backward).