[Tlhingan-hol] Lament (Re: A demonstration of aspect we can all follow)

[De'vID]

[If parts of this message seem a little repetitive, it's because I
started to compose it, left for dinner, and came back to find that a
couple of other people have already chimed in with the same points.]

De'vID:
>> This is a problem.  I guess back in the day when there were no or very
>> few experts, most of the conversations on the list happened at a
>> beginner's or an intermediate level.

Qov:
> I'm not sure that there were fewer experts posting in 1996, when I joined
> the list. They were different ones. It is certain that there were more
> newbies.

You're probably right that the number of skilled speakers is around
the same, but that the proportions have changed.  There are probably a
lot of factors behind this, but I would think the main one is that
there hasn't been any Klingons -- and especially Klingons speaking
good, Okrandian Klingon -- on screen for a long time.

De'vID:
>>  It's not that there's a lack of
>> beginners, but newbies are intimidated by long posts entirely in
>> Klingon (several people have told me this off-list),

Qov:
> As the person mostly responsible for this year's quota of long posts
> entirely in Klingon, I want to address this.

Let me provide some context for this.  A number of people who are
interested in Klingon have contacted me as a result of my Klingon app
for the Android phone.  Lots of people have mobile phones nowadays,
and people who are interested in Klingon search for "Klingon" on their
phone and find my app.  They ask me where they can find other Klingon
speakers, I point them at the KLI and this mailing list.

Unfortunately, the KLI web site looks like it's jumped through a
wormhole and travelled forward in time from 1995.  Seriously. And it
looks *terrible* on a mobile device like a phone or tablet.  Just
horrid.  So even before they get to the mailing list, they're already
turned off by the look of the KLI web site.

Then when they subscribe to the mailing list, or find the archives,
they find that it's a lot of long posts, and also conversations
between people who already know each other.  As a newbie, it's both
intimidating from an expectations point of view (they don't think they
can participate with speakers who can write several paragraphs without
resorting to English) and because they feel like outsiders to an
already established community.

Qov:
> Does the presence of such posts
> turn them off the group all together?  Does an English introduction and
> summary make any difference? The idea that doing what I love and trying to
> showcase the abilities of the language could turn people away is painful.
> What do I need to do? I don't really want to translate it all, because the
> story itself is a bit like a targ walking on its hind legs.

I don't think it's you, it's that society has changed and people have
changed.  Email is an antiquated technology.  These people who found
my connection to Klingon through their mobile phones or tablets expect
to be able to learn Klingon using and through their devices.  They
want audiovisual (one of the more requested features for my app is
sound), they want apps, they want Klingon on the go, they want to SMS
in Klingon, and long email messages just don't fit into their
worldview.  At least not until they attain a level of skill where they
can compose long messages themselves.

So, don't feel that your long posts are causing beginners to not
participating.  It's the medium that's the problem, along with a
change in culture in how people expect their primary form of
electronic communication to be.

> - Qov
>
> (who is kind of stunned that someone could want her story to not be here)

Wait a minute, nobody said that!

I have tried, on and off, to follow the story.  Once in a while I
manage to read an entire post, but most days I just don't have the
time, unfortunately.  And since it's a story, it's quite hard to get
back into once you skip two or three posts, because suddenly the
action is somewhere else and you have to remember who everyone is.
I'm quite startled by the pace at which you write.

I really wish, after you've completed it, that you'd publish it as a
(dead tree matter) book.  Maybe you can work something out with the
KLI, or even do it in installments.  I made it through the paq'batlh
(and before that, the Shakespeares) mostly because I physically
carried it around with me everywhere until I finished it, and if I'm
busy for a couple of days I could pick up right where I left off.  I
suppose a limiting factor with dead tree publishing is that the
audience for your book would be restricted to people who are at least
somewhat skilled in Klingon.  But maybe you, or even some other
people, can edit and translate the story into English, and make it a
bilingual book like the paq'batlh and Shakespeare restorations.  And
with today's print-on-demand technology, you don't need to have a lot
of readers to make it worthwhile to publish.

-- 
De'vID