Klingon | |
---|---|
| |
tlhIngan Hol |
|
Pronunciation | [ˈt͡ɬɪ.ŋɑn χol] |
Created by | Marc Okrand, James Doohan, Jon Povill |
Setting and usage |
Star Trek films and television series (TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise), the opera ‘u‘ and the Klingon Christmas Carol play. |
Users | Around a dozen fluent speakers (1996) |
Purpose | |
Latin alphabet, Klingon alphabets (pIqaD )
|
|
Sources |
Constructed languages A priori languages |
Official status | |
Regulated by | Marc Okrand |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-2 | tlh |
ISO 639-3 |
|
Glottolog | None |
The Klingon language (tlhIngan Hol
, pronounced [ˈt͡ɬɪ.ŋɑn χol], in pIqaD
) is the constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe.
Described in the 1985 book The Klingon Dictionary by Marc Okrand and deliberately designed to sound "alien", it has a number of typologically uncommon features. The language's basic sound, along with a few words, was first devised by actor James Doohan ("Scotty") and producer Jon Povill for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. That film marked the first time the language had been heard on screen. In all previous appearances, Klingons spoke in English. Klingon was subsequently developed by Okrand into a full-fledged language.
Klingon is sometimes referred to as Klingonese (most notably in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", where it was actually pronounced by a Klingon character as "Klingonee" /ˈklɪŋɡɒni/) but, among the Klingon-speaking community, this is often understood to refer to another Klingon language called Klingonaase that was introduced in John M. Ford's 1984 Star Trek novel The Final Reflection, and appears in other Star Trek novels by Ford. A shorthand version of what had previously been termed "Klingonaase", and later adopted under the same name by tlhIngan Hol
itself, is called "battle language", or "Clipped Klingon".