What is Reddit's opinion of boQwI' (Klingon language)?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Don't waste you're time buying the dictionary. I did, and it was a mistake. Even the latest version available hasn't been updated since the 90's and many more words have been added since then. I use Duolingo myself and it is a wonderful app, especially if used in conjunction with boQwI' on Android. My recommendation would be to work on just one lesson over and over again until you max it out to level 5 before moving to the next. The first few lessons can be a bit overwhelming since they introduce many new words at once. Then, go back to previous lessons whenever you feel you need to brush up. If you do decide to use Duolingo, feel free to add me. My username is DavidWehar

>http://klingonska.org/dict/ looks pretty good, but doesn't have those words either.

That site is not complete (and hasn't been updated since 2013.)

There are basically only two complete lexicons which have been kept up to date. One is <strong>boQwI</strong>' (disclosure: I am its maintainer) which is available as an app on Android and iOS. The other is the Language Academy (Hol 'ampaS) of the Klingon Assault Group.

Otherwise, the only way to get a complete lexicon is to combine the words from the published books, namely, The Klingon Dictionary, The Klingon Way, and Klingon For the Galactic Traveler, with the Klingon Language Institute's new words list, which collects the rest.

Also, Klingon is an agglutinative language. For such languages, you won't necessarily directly find the word you're looking for in a dictionary. You have to know how to break a word into its roots. (Dictionary lookups in such a language are like thesaurus lookups in English.)

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>I can't really believe that no good translation websites for Klingon exist.

Why? It's a constructed language based on the copyright intellectual property of a corporate entity, with a small number of speakers and almost no parallel texts which can be used to train machine translation. Why would you think a good translation website would exist for Klingon, when state-of-the-art machine translation can't even properly handle pairs of natural languages with millions of speakers (like Japanese and French)?

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>So, what's the Klingon word for slide? As in, what kids play on?

If you look in the KLI new words list above, you'll find toSwI' qal'aq for "jungle gym". This is composed from the verb toS "climb", the suffix -wI' "one who does", and qal'aq "supporting structure". A slide would therefore be tlhamwI' qal'aq, substituting the verb tlham "slide" for toS "climb".

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>Or stroller?

<strong>puq lupwI'Hom</strong>

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You can also verify directly that the following are in the lexicon by searching either boQwI' or Hol 'ampaS.

grass magh

garden Du'Hom

doll raghghan

park yotlh

blanket tlhIm

crawl 'eD

pillow ngogh tun or QongDaq bugHom

museum 'angweD

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For toy, playground, balloon, and sandbox, you'd have to be slightly creative and make up terms using words such as Quj "game", velqa' "replica", 'al "float in/on air", moQ "ball", yotlh "field", "park", rav "floor", che'ron "battlefield", and Do'ol "sand". Easily done.

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>I really doubt you can have normal daily conversations with children in Klingon without it being a huge pain in the butt, since the language was really nur designed for that use case. But maybe there's new additions?

I have a two-year-old child for whom Klingon is his fourth language (after English, Persian, and German, and before Cantonese). He really only speaks English and Persian, but he understands German and Klingon, and recognises Cantonese. So I can't "converse" with him in Klingon (because he doesn't consistently reply to me in Klingon), but I don't see why it would be any more difficult, in principle, than conversing with him in German. I've spoken to other people about him. He and I met with other Klingon speakers just this past Sunday, and we literally, by coincidence, had a conversation about his stroller.

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>Since you seem to be knowledgeable about this - who is responsible for what becomes an official word, and do new things get added?

Members of the Klingon Language Institute only recognise words created (or "blessed", which I'll explain) by Marc Okrand. Star Trek book authors (and previously, TV show writers) sometimes make up words also, but they're not generally recognised unless Okrand retroactively confirms (or "blesses") them.

Okrand does, in fact, add words constantly, which you can see from the KLI new words list

For those who want some Klingon dialogue in their work:

• Hol 'ampaS - Online Klingon language resource with an up-to-date dictionary

• Klingonska Akademien - Online Klingon language resource with an exhaustive canon archive

• boQwI' - Klingon dictionary and reference app (Android)

• KLI questions and answers - Like StackExchange for Klingon-related questions

• Learn Klingon on Facebook - Active Facebook group with both new learners and experienced speakers; if you post a question, you often get an answer within the hour.

• /r/tlhInganHol - Klingon langauge subreddit

To really get a hang of the grammar, a copy of The Klingon Dictionary is recommended.

Not quite the best way to learn thlIngan Hol, but definitely doable would be the Adnroid App boQwI'.

You could also pay around 20$ and 10$ once for the official books, Klingon for the Galactic Traveller and The Klingon Dictionary.

Concerning the KLI, I never even considered using it for my thlIngan studies, but from the looks of it, could it be possible that just registering allows you to access the lessons already?

PS: I am not aware of a Telegram or Teamspeak server.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.tlhInganHol.android.klingonassistant