[Tlhingan-hol] How Many grammarians?

[d'Armond Speers, Ph.D.]

I can shed some light on that.  The original idea with the "Level IV -
Grammarian" level for KLCP was to address an early question (early-to-mid
1990s), how does one become a "grammarian"?  There were two list members
who were recognized as grammarians (Seqram and Qanqor), and as the
community grew questions arose about how to earn such a distinction.  The
Level IV part of the exam was intended to address that question.  The
challenge is, how do you write a written test that really demonstrates the
level of fluency we were targeting?  In the KLCP documentation I described
Level IV as a group interview, with topics and evaluation of the results to
be solely at the discretion of the interviewers, who would themselves be
grammarians.  To my knowledge, we have never actually followed this process
for the Level IV KLCP.  While this was all developing, too, Lawrence had
these beautiful pins made up for the first 3 levels of the test, and
there's the significance of the number "3" to recognize, so in practice
we've just stuck with the three levels.

This is all separate from KLBC.  The "beginner's grammarian" is
specifically intended to be someone who is also still learning, but has
reached a sufficient state of skill and interest to take the post.
Teaching is a great way to learn.  (This was never tied to KLCP, so there
is no requirement to pass any level of KLCP to serve as BG.  But as a rough
yardstick, I would think a successful BG would be at the Level I or II of
KLCP.)  Once retired from the post, they become an {'utlh}, or respected,
retired officer.  Over time this has generalized from "Former Beginner's
Grammarian" to just "Grammarian", and thus serving a tour as BG has become
a de facto secondary path to grammarian status.  Which seems appropriate to
me, as the whole context for the original "grammarian" question was someone
on the mailing list who is respected and experienced enough with the
language to offer guidance and insight when questions arise, and KLBC seems
just as valid as KLCP to attain that recognition (especially since we don't
do KLCP Level IV).

-- Holtej 'utlh

On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 12:26 PM John R. Harness <cartweel at gmail.com> wrote:

> For what it's worth, my understanding of the title "grammarian" has so far
> revolved around those who had completed all levels of the certification
> course. This might be a product of the Beginner's Grammarian position being
> defunct during my few years in the community. Then again the course
> guidelines do list a *grammarian*-level exam, level 4.
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