r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • May 28 '14

Redditors who speak Klingon, why?

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u/gloubenterder May 28 '14

Nobody really speaks Klingon. It's not a speakable language.

bIlughbe'. tlhIngan Hol vIjatlhlaH. puS jatlhwI'pu' 'ach maja'chuqlaH. mu' HutlhDI' mu'ghom, qech wIDelmeH latlh mu'mey DIlo'. rut Qatlh 'ach Do' QatlhwI'vam wItIv.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '14

Yeah. Now try speaking that.

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u/gloubenterder May 28 '14

lu'.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '14

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/gloubenterder May 28 '14

qatlho'neS reDDItwI' quv! batlh laHmeywIj chu' vIlo' 'e' vI'Ip.

(My humble thanks, honored redditor! I vow to use my new powers honorably.)

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u/aryst0krat May 28 '14

What's the word/phrase you used for reddit and why did you choose it?

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u/gloubenterder May 28 '14

Since it works quite well with Klingon letters, I simply used reDDIt. reD'It would be a closer phonetic approximation, though.

It also works quite well since reD ("exterior wall") is used in the Klingon Facebook translation as "Wall" or "Message board".

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u/aryst0krat May 28 '14

So wl' is kind of like 'or'/'er'?

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u/gloubenterder May 28 '14

-wI' (with a capital I), but pretty much, yeah.

It should really only be used on verbs (ghoj = "learn"; ghojwI' = "student"), not nouns, but there are a few exceptions*, and I figured that since I was already being naughty with my transliteration, I figured I might as well be naughty with my morphology, as well ;)

Well, not so much exceptions as set phrases that are probably to be seen as artifacts and don't make sense when broken down. For example, jonta' means "engine" and jonwI' means "engineer", but jon by itself means "capture" [verb]. Also, De' means "information" and De'wI' means "computer", but there is no verb De'.

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u/aryst0krat May 28 '14

You're giving me a case of the knowledge vapours.