Talk:Klingon language

Klingon writing systems

I've copied text over to a separate Klingon writing systems page, as part of a proposal to break out the Writing systems section of Klingon language.

Reasoning:

1. The alphabets discussed here are distinct from both "Klingon languages", which are typically (and officially) written in the Latin alphabet.
2. These alphabets can also be used to transcribe English, as the illustrations show.
3. Thus the language(s) and alphabet(s) are not tied together in the way that (for instance) the Russian language and the Cyrillic alphabet are tied together.
4. Readers can, and may wish to, learn about the language(s) without learning about the alphabet(s) — or vice versa. The page structure should permit this.

If this is acceptable, the remaining step will be to replace that section in Klingon language with a link to this page. A similar link will also be placed in Klingonaase.

Translations and tags will also be needed.  – SAJordan ^talk_contribs 04:53, 9 Nov 2006 (UTC).

What way exactly are the Russian language and Cyrillic alphabet (which can be used to transcribe English, and which is the official alphabet of several hundred languages, and was originally designed for Old Church Slavonic, which is a South Slavic language unlike Russian which is an East Slavic language) tied together?--Prosfilaes 09:24, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

In contrast to the points above: (1) The Russian language is typically (and officially) written in the Cyrillic alphabet; (2) The Cyrillic alphabet "maps" to the phonemes of Russian but not English (compare the remark on Mandelian, "Its letters map to various letters and digraphs of English, but they have no relation to Marc Okrand's Klingon language."); (3) An article on the Russian language will need to actually use the Cyrillic alphabet — as Wikipedia's does, right from the start: "Russian (Russian: [русский язык, russkiy yazyk] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), [ˈru.skʲɪj jɪˈzɨk]...)"; (4) Thus it will need to incorporate some discussion of that alphabet.

Marc Okrand's The Klingon Dictionary didn't use or depend upon any non-Latin characters. (It briefly refers to the Klingon "native writing system" as being "called pIqaD", but doesn't show any characters of it.) The two pIqaD scripts that do map to his phonemes were "retrofitted" to do so. Thus tlhIngan Hol can be discussed without reference to these scripts, here as in TKD, and the writing systems can be discussed separately.  – SAJordan ^talk_contribs 19:35, 9 Nov 2006 (UTC).

IPA renditions of tlh and Q

Article states:

<tlh> — ____ — voiceless alveolar lateral affricate (as Nahuatl Nahuatl)

<Q> — ____ — voiceless uvular affricate (occurs in Nez Percé, Wolof and Kabardian)

The two "____" blanks above are where the IPA renditions at issue belong.

Previously the IPA values were shown as /t͡ɬ/ and /q͡χ/ respectively.

Now 169.233.72.162 (who has made no other edits anywhere) has changed these to /tɬ͡/ and /qχ͡/ respectively, as well as changing /t͡ɬ/ to /tɬ͡/ in the infobox, with no edit summary.

Please note that the voiceless alveolar lateral affricate article uses /t͡ɬ/ — as did this article previously.

It is my impression that the arch ("tie bar") should be over the two IPA characters (conjoining them as a single phoneme), not between the latter and the closing "/". But I'm no expert. I'd like to have confirmation or correction from someone more familiar with IPA than myself, please.

In the absence of any explanation, and of any track record for this editor, I am reverting this alteration once. I'm not confident enough to do it twice.

Can anyone else conclusively determine the validity or invalidity of this alteration? – SAJordan ^talk_contribs 08:13, 5 Dec 2006 (UTC).

I think the problem is that the "tie bar" is sometimes displayed wrongly in some fonts. The correct way is to put it between the first and second character of the cluster; however, in some fonts it appears to join the two characters before it. So it's a font issue... but you were right to revert 169.233.72.162's change, although (s)he did it in good faith. Thus, /t͡ɬ/ and /q͡χ/ are the correct ways to transcribe tlh and Q in IPA. — N-true 23:42, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Canon fodder

I like the new "Canon" section. Though, a question: Are the two books Hamlet and ghIlghameS considered Canon? — N-true 02:08, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I believe that everything in those publications was canon already.Alpha Omicron 04:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Qapla'

Where the word Qapla' appears in the text, in quotes, it is virtually impossible to see the ' at the end because it gets hidden in the double quotes. At first I thought you guys had mispelled it, and indeed I had to go to the "edit this page" to see the source to realize it was right, just impossible to see. I don't know what the right solution is, but as it is now, readers will draw an erroneous conclusion about what the word is.

--Captain Krankor, Grammarian, Klingon Language Institute

Good point, I deleted the quotes around it. You could've done the same, you know. ;) — N-true 11:59, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I bow to the Grammarian in his greater understanding of the language, however I know some speakers prefer to use ` rather than ' to accent the glotal stop - Qapla` - this avoids confusion when words are placed in quotation or speachmarks 'Qapla`' "Qapla`". This is non-standard use certainly but it seems to assist non speakers. Bat King 11 July 07

Might be. Especially the German translation of the Klingon dictionary missuses that character. However, <`> is not correct, because it's a grave accent, the orthographical apostrophe is – and has to be – <'> or, alternatively, <’>. "Qapla'" / "Qapla’" / "Qapla`". — N-true 14:50, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I know it isn't correct, hence stating it was'non sandard' but it remains a fact that some speakers use the ` in that way. I actually use the correct '. Bat King 27 October 2007

Cultural References

I propose we move that section to it's own article at Klingon language in popular culture, it's rather large relative to the rest of the article. Alpha Omicron 03:40, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

accuracy of estimation of speakers of language

hmmm, I do not agree that (the accuracy of the statement is well-known; it is as likely that there are 100,000 speakers of Klingon hiding somewhere as it is that there a few million speakers of Navaho hiding somewhere) (undo) There is linguistic documentation proving the current rate of speakers of navajo, however any linguistic research on Klingon is highly subjective... and much of what is written in one source about it contradicts what is written in another source... wheras Navajo has a more cohesive outlook. Secondly it is quite debatable as what refers to as Klingon speech. To be included in this consesus must one speak all forms of thlingon Hol, or only thlingon Hol in Canon, or must one speak Klingonaase, or clipped Klingon, or all the forms of each Klingon "language"? Each of these is distinct from the other in some fashion. It is not known precisely how many speakers of Klingonaase there are in addition to tlhIngon Hol, canon or not canon, which is why I detest your claim that "it is well known" (by whom?) The only thing that can roughly be said that is well kown about either language from a societal standard is that Navajo is spoken conversationally and so is Klingon. Aside from that we don't enough about either language, although there is much more historical data on the Navajo language since Klingon is modern. Furthermore, does one have to be relatively fluent, or know only a few words of a language in order to be considered a 'speaker' of said language? Again, I reiterate, there are many issues presented as to what would classify a proper speaker of Klingon. And I also find it quite intriguing that there is no reference material for this point of view within the article. Chado2423 18:46, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

First, we're talking about tlhIngan Hol as described in The Klingon Dictionary. This article is not about Klingonaase. Different people count different things as speaking a language, but to be counted as a speaker of the language, you should at the very least be able to communicate basic ideas grammatically without reference to a book. There are no speakers of Klingonaase by that definition; the language is simply not well enough defined to speak it like that. I have never seen any estimate that puts the number of speakers of Klingon anywhere near that level.

Knowing a few words is nothing. Almost every person in the Western world knows a few words of Latin--"et cetera", "cogito, ergo sum", "Felius domesticus" "Vulpes vulpes", etc. But they couldn't use the language for the sole purpose of a language, that is to communicate.

Unless you're claiming that there are a 100,000 speakers of Klingon, there's no real point in having this argument. Are you making that claim?--Prosfilaes 14:47, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I am not stating that there are 100,000 speakers of Klingon. Instead I am stating that we do not have appropiate assesments of the number, which is why we can neither rightfully claim that there are or are not that number. "The Onion" is satircal so it cannot be used as a source, however THE KLI can and the closest thing I have found that may shed some light on the number of Klingon speakers is this: http://home.swipnet.se/~w-12689/survey.htm. This article references KLI's consensus of Klingon speakers. It is the best official estimation, however a linguistic approach would be more beneficial. My argument is that it is invalid to state that there is or is not any number, and to make any claim on any topic without a verifiable source is just poor authorship. "It is well known" what source is it well known by? This "general knowledge" is poor by wikipedia's standards. At the very least whoever wrote this could have attributed a source to their p.o.v. I believe we could at least reference the KLI'S estimation, in which that they claim that they make it clear that they do not know how many speakers there are, except that it is over 200 something. Please do not misunderstand that I am saying that there are only 200 to 300 speakers, nor am I saying that there are 100,000 or more. Instead I am saying that it would be best to find linguistic research, and find a more appropiate consesus rather than attributing it to percieved "general knowledge." Chado2423 03:59, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

That's a cop-out. We always want more numbers, but they aren't going to magically appear. We have a set of numbers for the number of speakers of Klingon, and the top number is less than a thousand. The odds that there are more than 100,000 speakers is minimal and to state that their might be is deceptive and wrong.--Prosfilaes 16:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. In the sidebar, it says 12 fluent speakers in 1996. In the article it says "According to Guinness World Records for 2006, it is the most spoken fictional language by number of speakers." The Esperanto article has estimates for that language of 100,000-2 million speakers, and 200-2000 *native* speakers. One wonders where the Guiness claim came from. -- Mindstalk (talk) 21:31, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

As far as I know, a fictional language is a distinct and specific type of constructed language. Klingon is a fictional constructed language that was intended for use in a fictional production. Esperanto is a constructed language intended to be used as an international lingua franca. I see no problems with the data.  LinguistAtLarge • Msg  22:43, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Frasier

In an episode of Frasier, a Jewish Trekkie coworker called Noel performs an act of revenge by translating into Klingon, rather than Hebrew, a speech which Frasier gives at his son's bar mitzvah. I am mildly curious to know whether or not this was authentic Klingon. PDAWSON3 (talk) 10:04, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

The speech was written(or translated) by Okrand, so it's authentic Klingon. The way it's spoken, though, isn't.--Cyberman TM (talk) 19:25, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:TheKlingonHamlet.jpg

The image Image:TheKlingonHamlet.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

• That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
• That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --10:54, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Resolved

 – Rationale added. —C.Fred (talk) 13:42, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Only greeting in Klingon?

Pardon me, as I do not speak Klingon. Quoted from the article:

"They often greet each other with the Klingon word nuqneH (literally: "What do you want?"). This is the only greeting in Klingon."

Perhaps that IS the only greeting currently used. How ever, I recall hearing an interview with some Star Trek authors, many years ago. In response to requests the created a Klingon greeting, which translated to: "Have you fought recently?" Saxophobia (talk) 23:02, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

That's a nice and creative way that Klingons – if they existed – might actually say as a greeting. However, it's not canon, meaning it was never said in a Star Trek show or movie and cannot be found as a phrase in the various Klingon dictionaries and phrasebooks. — N-true (talk) 00:26, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

IPA chart

Why is /v/ not in a labio-dental column? Why is /enwiki/w/ not a voiced labio-velar approximant as defined in the IPA handbook? -- Evertype·✆ 22:10, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

quotation accuracy

In the Undiscovered Country, didn't General Chang make the remark about Shakespeare being best read in the original Klingon?

No, it was Chancellor Gorkon, as is also written on the back of the Hamlet book itself. However, the quote isn't a real quote. It was said differenty in the movie. — N-true (talk) 21:03, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Gender

I think it is wrong to analyze the distinction between speakers, body parts and others as gender. In the Klingon Dictionary, Marc Okrand clearly states that Klingon does not respect gender. It is understandable that the difference between, for example, the different plural markers, the most variable suffix in this respect, the distinction being made is not a real gender system, but a distinction of animacy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.212.106.138 (talk) 01:48, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Animate and inanimate are gender. In fact, that's what Swedish has (more or less: common vs. neuter). What Okrand meant was that Klingon does not have sex-based gender, which is how European-language speakers generally conceive of gender. kwami (talk) 07:34, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

The grammatical category including animate and inanimate is "animacy", which is not the same thing as grammatical gender. It's true to say that Klingon doesn't have grammatical gender, but animacy plays a role in a way. Many languages make a distinction between gender and animacy, cf. Russian, which has three genders (m, f, n), but also two grades of animacy (anim, inanim). Spanish has a similar distinction between animacy and gender. However, I wonder if one could speak of two or three declension classes or even noun classes for Klingon. I doubt the latter, but am not sure 'bout the former idea. — N-true (talk) 15:10, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Noun class is gender. Gender need not include masc. & fem. Could be human, zoic, & inanimate. Animacy is a broader concept that animate/inanimate gender: pronouns have higher animacy than nouns, for example. kwami (talk) 17:54, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

(In support of kwami) In linguistic terminology, unlike everyday speech (and discussion of society, sex, and politics), "gender" is often used to refer to noun classes regardless of whether they have any historical or statistical association with sex. Two quotations:

• Some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", but others use different definitions for each.
  (WP:Noun class)
• According to Brown and Miller (1980), it is a feature of many Bantu languages that (i) nouns and adjectives have the following structure: prefix + stem, (ii) the prefix carries information about gender (or, more generally, the noun class) and number and (iii) there is concord between the head noun and adjectives and demonstratives (if these exist).
  (Gender and concord in Bantu languages, query posted on the LINGUIST List by Daniel Robertson, 21 Jan 2004)

copyright

I have been told from the United States Copyright Office that "a language of itself is not protected by copyright" (I had asked specifically about conlangs), which agrees with the article. However, it would be nice to have a citable reference for this. Does anyone know one? kwami (talk) 07:31, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Does this language actually deserve a page?

Firstly: According to the main Wikipedia page, only 12 speakers are known throughout the world. Technically speaking, there are more speakers of binary code (due to encryption) than Klingon, yet there in no article on Binary (Cryptographic Language). Every person since childhood who played Commander Keen had memorized most of "standard galactic alphabet" but no-one really cares. Secondly: Is the Klingon language actually used by anyone on the cast of Star Trek? For example, the cast of Avatar speak some kind of language (which was actually documented by writers) although the Navii is never actually spoke it properly. The Rayman series by UBIsoft speak gibberish throughout the whole thing.

You can't judge a constructed language by the same standards as a natural language. Especially a language like Klingon, which was never created with the purpose of becoming a spoken language to begin with. Klingon was created to serve as an illustration, a feature of an alien race, and as such it does an eminent job. The number of fans or other people who've learned it is completely moot.

Please note that numbers of speakers are always a difficult point in the case of constructed languages. It's much easier to establish the number of speakers of Russian, although even these figures are already problematic: we can take native speakers for granted, but how do we count people who've only learned it at school, for example? And well, constructed languages have no native speakers (Esperanto being the exception here) and aren't generally thought in schools. Therefore, we can't really establish their number of speakers either, because who decides who is a speaker and who isn't? Is a person who has gone through 10 lessons, but doesn't use the language, a speaker? Is a person who regularly writes a few sentences with the help of a dictionary and a grammar a speaker? And who's going to find out? Instead of "speakers" it's better to speak of "users", but even then, it is incredibly hard to give reliable figures.

As for your seond question, I don't know; never watched the series. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 12:47, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

German myth

I removed the following uncited and doubtful text regarding the "German Myth" from the article. If you believe any part of it is accurate, please re-add it to the article, making appropriate citations to reliable sources. Thanks, Vectro (talk) 14:04, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

However, this myth is unknown in Germany, although the German translation is commonly considered so good as to be better than the original.

I always thought that it was Russians who claimed to have originally had Shakespeare, etc. I even think I remember Chekhov talking along those lines once or twice. Never heard this about Germans. Anyway: for what it's worth. Shocking Blue (talk) 22:19, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

'u' (opera)

There is an opera entirely in the Klingon language. See 'u' (opera). -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:09, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Category: Speakers of Klingon

Category:Speakers of Klingon has been nominated for discussion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz  (Discussion) 13:49, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Appearances in other media - Wiktionary and Don't Copy That 2

It appears that the Wiktionary community feels that Qapla' qualifies as a loan word from Klingon. [1] (see discussion page for more details) I'm thinking that this might be worth mentioning in Klingon_language#Appearances_in_other_media. However, as a Klingonist I'm hardly an impartial judge, and I'm also not that experienced with Wikipedia or Wiktionary, so I figured I'd suggest it here rather than add it myself.

Also, the phrase De' nIb DachenmoHchugh bIquvHa' (subbed as "To duplicate data... is a great dishonor!"; more literally "If you create identical data, you are dishonored.") is used in a trailer for Don't Copy That 2. Marc Okrand - the creator of tlhIngan Hol - was on the set to make sure the Klingon was authentic. [2] Photos at time indexes 0:45, 1:14 and 1:18 of this slideshow. The Klingon subtitles used in the actual video appear to be nonsensical, but I don't have a citation for that. --Tesseraktik (talk) 10:43, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Relationship to Mongolian Language?

Should it perhaps be mentioned that the greater part of the Klingon language concept derives from Mongolian? I think every linguist whould agree with me. Mongolian, like any other Altaic language is highly agglutinativ, as Klingon is. Also Klingon is "thlIngan Hol" in Klingon (IPA: /tɬɪŋɑn xol/) and Mongolian is "Mongol hel" (IPA: /mɔŋɣɔl xɛl/), so we have "Hol" and "hel" for language in Klingon and Mongolian. Einstein92 (talk) 05:23, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

No, it shouldn't. Obviously you are not a linguist, nor have you asked one, nor have you done even the most basic research, like checking Wikipedia.

• There are plenty of non-Altaic agglutinative languages in the world.
• "[T]he large size of all languages' vocabulary and a relatively limited inventory of articulated sounds used by most languages make it easy to find coincidentally similar words between languages" (Comparative linguistics#Pseudoscientific language comparison).
• From the article, last paragraph of Language section (this was in the article as of 11 July 2011, before you wrote your comment):

  Features of the Klingon language were inspired by various real Earth languages studied by Okrand, particularly indigenous languages of the Americas. Okrand himself has stated that a design principle of the Klingon language was dissimilarity to existing natural languages in general, and English in particular. He therefore avoided patterns that are typologically common and deliberately chose features that occur relatively infrequently in human languages.

--Thnidu (talk) 05:58, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

More font families for Klingon?

I notice the article currently only has code2000 and pIqaD as the fonts for the klingon characters, there are a number of others now, is it alright if I add them to the font stuff in the page? constructium, FairFax (same site) both of which follow the CSUR. I thought I saw more but now I'm not so sure. Kaelem Gaen (talk) 20:25, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Good reference to add annotation from

http://www.startrek.com/article/qapla-klingon-language-creator-marc-okrand-part-1 contains a two part interview of Okrand from November 2011, including specific documentation for the original creator of Klingon language being James Doohan. 76.179.61.154 (talk) 03:00, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Good reference, but "original creator", out of context, is quite a stretch. Quoting Okrand from the article:

[Doohan created] perhaps a half dozen lines in Klingon with subtitles at the beginning of the film [Star Trek III: The Search for Spock]. ... I came along and fleshed it out.

--Thnidu (talk) 06:06, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Removal request for Klingon letters

Hi,

I propose to remove the Klingon letters used throughout the text, which are only visible if you install something.

Yes, I am a friend of the Klingon language, and I even belong to the few people who can read pIqaD, so I should accept it. But I believe that using the font makes the page look less serious for people who like to look up what Klingon is when they find a bunch of incorrect shown characters. And it still is difficult to make Klingon be considered as a serious language. Next, I believe that very, very few poeple have this font system installed on their computer, and they will not install it, just to read this one page. It's not (yet) a standard option on Windows you might just activate with a click. Maybe it's better to add images to display the caracters. By the way, I know that other languages (chinese, japanese or arabic) also have the display problem, but that's not my only point.
An addtion: The article starts with the note Some characters may not display correctly on the page, unless you have the Klingon pIqaD script installed on your computer, but the link does not lead you to a useful page that helps you getting this script.

Please answer keep or remove and discuss here until we have enough answers what you consider best. Thanks for your support. -- LLieven (talk) 15:27, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Keep. Our goal should be to display the characters correctly. To that end, two solutions would be to use image text or a Klingon webfont, not to remove content in the Klingon alphabet. ~ Robin Lionheart (talk) 18:14, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Remove. I'm a Klingonist too, and I agree with Lieven here. — N-true (talk) 23:10, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Comment. I see them correctly, although I've no idea thanks to which font that is. But LLieven has a point. If most visitors will just see boxes or something else they shouldn't see, then it would be better to remove the sentences with images files. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 00:39, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Remove Even with Unicode-supported scripts, we don't use them if they're overly obscure. And Klingon isn't even Unicode-supported. If we want to include the script, we need images (.svg would be best). — kwami (talk) 22:56, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• Apparently there's some ambiguity in this poll, since I voted Keep for "replace with images", and Kwami voted Remove for "replace with images". ~ Robin Lionheart (talk) 00:55, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Yes, I should have been clearer. I have no problem with the script per se, only with accessibility. As for whether we should keep something, I suppose we could look at other language articles for comparison. If the letters were accessible, I wouldn't see any reason to remove them. — kwami (talk) 01:32, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
    • Hehe, and I voted Comment. :) So it seems we all agree: it's better to use image files. So now the two questions are: is it worth the effort doing that for all examples sentences, and who's gonna do it? —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 08:36, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
      • It would be worth it for the name of the language in the infobox. — kwami (talk) 09:41, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
        • I intended Remove only for removing the script displaying squares for most of the users. I was not talking about the images used to display the font, which I believe is a good option. I think it's not worth for all the example sentences, but I intend to change them anyway. Those are not good examples, taken from a limmerick contest. Would you think this is a good exapmple for the english languagee to show: The thirty-three thieves thought that they thrilled the throne throughout Thursday?? ;-) -- LLieven (talk) 15:42, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

The writing should absolutely be removed, unless and until it can be replaced with images. It is encoded using Unicode Private Use Area code points, which are quite simply not meant for public interchange. Since there hasn't been any activity on the above discussion (which seemed to have a "replace with images" consensus anyway), I've gone ahead and removed the text. -- Perey (talk) 18:11, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

That should be reverted. It is common to have BOTH text and images. -- Evertype·✆ 18:31, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

• I vote "Keep". I often copy and paste pIqaD text off of wiki articles, which I wouldn't be able to do if they were using images instead of text. I'm okay with using both, but I feel that it would be a disservice to the language to stop using the fonts that we do have available. It was pointed out that there is a bad link not directing to a valid pIqaD font. The solution is to fix the link. Those that want to display pIqaD can simply install the valid font. There are plenty of other language articles that use characters that not everyone can display. --NaHQun (talk) 19:32, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
  • But those other language articles use scripts with public assignments in Unicode. Any given computer may not be capable of rendering them, but they'll display the right thing or nothing (assuming correct behaviour at the user's end). When we use characters from the Private Use Area, all bets are off. The only place they would be appropriate would be in a section that actually states, "Here's an example of pIqaD text encoded according to the CSUR assignments; what you see will vary." They shouldn't be used elsewhere, like the lead or ordinary body text. (I hope this clarifies my earlier statements, Evertype: my issue is with PUA characters, not text vs images vs both.) -- Perey (talk) 07:07, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Major problem

In Klingon, the eyes are alwas capitalized and the ells are lowercase. This poses a problem, since the font used throughout WP does not distinguish I and l. I guess that if you look carefully, you can see a minor difference in thickness, but it is hard to tell when you are actually reading something. I thought that "pIqaD" was to be pronounced as plaque with a D.

Some suggestions:

1. Use a different font. Like Times.

 Or you can try the thing where you space in and the text becomes code.  This is easy to read I l I l I l

1. Break the rules. Make the eyes lowercase. piquaD, not pIqaD. Or at least add a curcumflex or other sign "pÎqaD" Ticklewickleukulele (talk) 04:05, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

If one is familiar with the strict syllable structure in Klingon, one cannot become confused. However, because the article is meant as much for those who don't know, we should try to fix this. It would be solved if we could force the font that is display, but I don't know how. The other two are out of the question: The first makes the article look amateurish and the second breaks the most holy of Wikipedia's basic rules (no OR). --JorisvS (talk) 11:23, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree that solution #1 looks awful and solution #2 is completely out of the question. But it is also true that it IS a problem indeed.

The simplest solution I can think of is using the <tt>...</tt> tags. Then you get something like pIqaD, which IMO doesn't look bad at all, and neither is it difficult to implement. —IJzeren Jan _Uszkiełtu? 15:00, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd say that's enough to solve the problem. --JorisvS (talk) 11:35, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Klingon "o"

In the lead section it says that "o" is pronounced [o], i.e. closed. In the "Vowels" section, it also says: "close-mid back rounded vowel (in French eau)". But in the lead section of the German artcle it says [ɔ], meaning open as in "Tom". A German WP editor confirmed that, citing Okrand's official dictionary. Could someone look it up in the English original? -- UKoch (talk) 22:25, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Please ignore the above -- it seems the guy who translated Okrand's dictionary made a mistake. (The German WP editor I mentioned above cited the German translation, rather than the original.) -- UKoch (talk) 14:36, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

FYI: this mistake has been corrected in this year's updated edition. -- Lieven (talk) 19:33, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Removal of the "Noun rules" section

If it be fine with everyone, I would like to remove the noun rules section, since that is now covered in the klingon grammar section reH ghun ghunwI' 00:58, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I would say that the "Grammar-section" of this page should contain a very rough summary of how klingon rgrammar works with some examples. Anything that goes into detail (e.g. the noun rules) should move to that new Klingon grammar page. -- Lieven (talk) 19:33, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Example sentences

I believe I mentioned that before, but I'd suggest to add better, more usual klingon phrases as example phrases. Things, that people can use - even though it might even be "to day is a good day to die". It is my opinion that spoonerisms and pangrams are not a good example to represent a language. -- Lieven (talk) 19:33, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

angle brackets

... are not visible (at least on my screen): ⟨angle brackets⟩. Please fix that or use a different kind to show klingon letters. -- Lieven (talk) 10:34, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Why aren't they visible on your screen? They're fine here, and I oppose changing them to try and fix some unknown problem on an unknown number of computers, instead of fixing the problem as much as we can.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:11, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

You're right; I now tried it with different computers, different screens and different browsers. Some look better others don't. I wrote my comment right after I had had the worst case, where the brackets appeared in a very light grey, so they were almost invisible. It looks like there is no way (and no need) to fix that. -- Lieven (talk) 07:16, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

citation needed

Somebody has added several marks of citation needed... A general question of mine is: when the mark comes at the end of a paragraph of three sentences, which one does he want citation for? Next, I believe that some of the statements are common knowledge. What can I use as a source for instance for "Its vocabulary, heavily centered on Star Trek-Klingon concepts such as spacecraft or warfare, can sometimes make it cumbersome for everyday use."? Another phrase, "In the bonus material on the DVD, [...]" starts with naming the source ("on the DVD"). Isn't that enough? Anyway, I'll take care of the others, which are clear they need a source. -- Lieven (talk) 08:00, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

You could try to cite all sentences then: even when there is no tag it is an improvement when an uncited statement is cited. If you can use the same source for all sentences, just replace the tag, else, just add a source for each sentence individually. The former sentence is definitely not something you should assume to be "common knowledge". You could look at Klingon for the Galactic Traveler to see if it says something like that. As for the latter, it is indeed clear what the source is, but you could also add a ref tag to it with as much info about it as you could; it is nice to have it actually show in the reference list. --JorisvS (talk) 08:42, 17 January 2014 (UTC)