[Tlhingan-hol] friend of Maltz

[lojmIt tI'wI' nuv 'utlh]

In agreement completely with this post, I’ll add that only a minority of the people here are intensely into the Star Trek Universe and have adopted the Klingon language as an extension of that interest. It’s a valid minority, deserving respect, but there’s a problem with too much purity with that focus:

The 21st century corporation that owns the rights to the Star Trek Universe has less interest in keeping the product consistent than the fan base. Any time they find it in their business interest to make radical change, they do it, as the original post here points out. So, with a flick of the magic wand that says, “We’re on a new time line now,” our entire canon base could be wiped out, and to be pure, we should start over.

Meanwhile, there are a remarkable number of people here who are interested in the language because it is an interesting language. We love the obscure puns in the vocabulary (which have nothing to do with pure Star Trek story canon, and plant elements of the language to the name of one of Okrand’s neighbors, or to the two character names of one actor in a play within a play by Shakespeare). We love the stories about how words were created because of production problems during the moviemaking process. We love the story of {‘I’}.

We love the grammatical rules and their exceptions. We love that such a small vocabulary and unusual, but relatively simple grammar can be so useful for expressing such a wide range of ideas.

In other words, we are as engaged in Marc Okrand’s Universe as we are in Star Trek’s Universe. If the real-world corporation behind Star Trek were to completely invalidate everything about what we know as the Klingon language, most of us would keep it as is with modifications as Okrand comes up with them, because over so many years, this has become our language. Yeah, the corporation owns it, but they don’t understand it. They don’t understand how it works, what it can do, or why we are interested in it.

So, we let them own our language, so long as they don’t get too stupid about it. For instance, presenting gibberish on-screen, "written Klingon" and then declaring that nobody can use pIqaD to actually SAY anything was corporate political thuggery to serve the preference of an artist who wanted to show Klingon writing without having to be responsible for making it actually say anything meaningful.

Fans of the language came up with a character set that does allow writing forbidden by this edict, and eventually, the corporation came around, realizing that fewer people would buy their SkyBox cards if the pIqaD presented on them didn’t have meaning. So, the corporation now has a split reality, where they sell product with fan invented pIqaD writing meaningful text, while the movies continue to show Greeked characters pretending to be written Klingon, designed for artistic appearance without any language-related meaning.

There are many splits in the Star Trek Universe. Purity is impossible, but if seeking it fascinates you, go for it. The Force at the heart of IDIC is quite powerful. Your contributions will likely enrich it.

Or not.

It’s only fiction, after all. Even if bits of it make more sense than Reality, and at times, it seems like a better place to live.

lojmIt tI’wI’ nuv ‘utlh
Door Repair Guy, Retired Honorably



On Jun 28, 2014, at 12:40 PM, Lieven <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:

> Am 28.06.2014 18:11, schrieb BT Yahoo!:
>> This seems to be a case of an established fanon being contradicted by later new canon.
> [...]
>> How does Tlhingan-hol email group accomodate that?
> 
> Well, depending on who you ask, there is no problem of canonicity. There are many people (like on Memory Alpha) who only accept "canon" as what is seen on screen, and TKD is "only" considered background artwork, just like many other books. So from their point of view, Maltz has definitely been captured by Kirk, but nobody has ever said that it was him who tought Klingon to the federation.
> 
> Even ging a step further, we have no evidence that Okrand is talking about that specific same Maltz (although it should be obvious)
> 
> Anyway, I think I can speak for the entire group when I say that we have no problem with this being canon or not; Maltz is a synonym for Marc Okrand, who created the Klingon language, wrote it down in his TKD and that's the language we are learning. In this group of people, it's an agreement to only accept words from Okrand.
> 
> -- 
> Lieven L. Litaer
> aka Quvar valer 'utlh
> http://www.facebook.com/Klingonteacher
> http://wiki.qepHom.de/En/Maltz
> 
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