Real answer: these are actually real languages! They’re just conlangs, or constructed languages, instead of natural languages. The major problem with conlangs generally ends up being the limited vocabulary, but the grammar foundations are usually solid.
I actually really like Klingon as a language because it was intentionally designed to be alien, and specifically to be very Klingon. Most languages are Subject-Verb-Object (like English and other Western languages) or Subject-Object-Verb (like Japanese or Hindi). Klingon, however, is Object-Verb-Subject - it’s very direct with the emphasis placed on the target of the sentence, which makes sense with the Star Trek world and Klingon culture.
Fun fact, Klingon has at least one native speaker - some guy raised his daughter to speak Klingon as well as English. (I’m not a fan of this - on one hand, learning multiple languages from an early age is a huge leg up in being able to learn more languages in the future, but on the other hand Klingon is entirely useless as a primary language given its structure and the few other people who speak it.)
Even cooler, in my opinion, are languages that are even further outside of common indo european language paradigms, such as Navajo which uses degrees of animacy instead of grammatical gender and Basque which uses ‘focus’ and ‘topic’ to determine word order rather than subjects and objects.
such as Navajo which uses degrees of animacy instead of grammatical gender
What makes their use of degrees of animacy not a use of grammatical gender? Keep in mind that even though it’s called “gender” because in European languages it usually maps in some way onto human sexual identity, linguistically speaking grammatical gender has nothing to do with human gender identity.
Yeah without a doubt it is. There are a few non-European languages that use a masculine/feminine grammatical split, including Arabic and Hebrew, but both masc/fem and masc/fem/neuter are hugely prevalent in European languages, and I doubt the term got its name from Arabic linguists.
I’ve just done some Googling and learnt that some people prefer the term “noun classes” rather than grammatical gender, especially when the classes are not based on human cultural genders. Other people make a distinction between what “noun classes” means and what “grammatical gender” is, using them for two different concepts. So apparently the term “grammatical gender” is not quite as uncontroversial within linguistics as I thought.
No, that’s still subject-verb-object or at least adjective clause-noun depending on how it’s read (it should have a hyphen in that case but stuff like that gets left out a lot)
Speers was also the only person who would speak Klingon to Alec and the boy never saw Star Trek during this experiment, so didn’t ever see anyone but his father speaking it. As everyone else spoke English, Speers stated when Alec was about three years old, “He stopped listening to me when I spoke in Klingon. It was clear that he didn’t enjoy it, and I didn’t want to make it into a problem, so I switched to English…”
Today the teenage Alec no longer is fluent in Klingon and reportedly can’t even pick out the meaning of individual words of the language.
The main verb is most often in the second position, the second verb you are referring to is a placeholder for an auxiliary verb that usually is a different form of a previously main verb
Real answer: these are actually real languages! They’re just conlangs, or constructed languages, instead of natural languages. The major problem with conlangs generally ends up being the limited vocabulary, but the grammar foundations are usually solid.
I actually really like Klingon as a language because it was intentionally designed to be alien, and specifically to be very Klingon. Most languages are Subject-Verb-Object (like English and other Western languages) or Subject-Object-Verb (like Japanese or Hindi). Klingon, however, is Object-Verb-Subject - it’s very direct with the emphasis placed on the target of the sentence, which makes sense with the Star Trek world and Klingon culture.
Fun fact, Klingon has at least one native speaker - some guy raised his daughter to speak Klingon as well as English. (I’m not a fan of this - on one hand, learning multiple languages from an early age is a huge leg up in being able to learn more languages in the future, but on the other hand Klingon is entirely useless as a primary language given its structure and the few other people who speak it.)
Even cooler, in my opinion, are languages that are even further outside of common indo european language paradigms, such as Navajo which uses degrees of animacy instead of grammatical gender and Basque which uses ‘focus’ and ‘topic’ to determine word order rather than subjects and objects.
What makes their use of degrees of animacy not a use of grammatical gender? Keep in mind that even though it’s called “gender” because in European languages it usually maps in some way onto human sexual identity, linguistically speaking grammatical gender has nothing to do with human gender identity.
Good point. What I meant is that it’s different from grammatical gender typical of European languages as you defined it.
Grammatical gender is a bad name for such a general concept that goes beyond the social definition of gender. In fact, that term is a bit eurocentric.
Yeah without a doubt it is. There are a few non-European languages that use a masculine/feminine grammatical split, including Arabic and Hebrew, but both masc/fem and masc/fem/neuter are hugely prevalent in European languages, and I doubt the term got its name from Arabic linguists.
I’ve just done some Googling and learnt that some people prefer the term “noun classes” rather than grammatical gender, especially when the classes are not based on human cultural genders. Other people make a distinction between what “noun classes” means and what “grammatical gender” is, using them for two different concepts. So apparently the term “grammatical gender” is not quite as uncontroversial within linguistics as I thought.
So klingons would like the song Hammer Smashed Face?
No, that’s still subject-verb-object or at least adjective clause-noun depending on how it’s read (it should have a hyphen in that case but stuff like that gets left out a lot)
Guess I got my subject and object confused. Never paid much attention to sentence diagrams
qab ronmoh Mupwi’? Doesn’t really make sense if you don’t know who does the hammering…
Man I bet Klingon death metal would be amazing
https://youtu.be/SKwM8f6vzEI?si=csuTzsEWL_hqvl5a
Face, smashed by hammer.
Face, when the hammer fell
Sokath, his eyes uncovered.
I both absolutely hate this episode for how bizarre it is, and love it at the same time for how alien and unique it is.
I’m hard pressed to believe that a society could communicate on metaphors alone.
🤓
Some of my earliest memories are watching The Next Generation with my parents. I never stood a chance! I was always destined to be 🤓
Caveman moment
I often forget the Internet is filled with autists who don’t catch sarcasm.
Wow
That can’t be right. I’ve never heard of a language called Dutch. That’s just something they print on some food labels to make them seem better.
/s for the dense.
I might be wrong, but isn’t German Subject-Verb-Object-Verb?
The main verb is most often in the second position, the second verb you are referring to is a placeholder for an auxiliary verb that usually is a different form of a previously main verb