{"id":12455,"date":"2012-08-25T08:00:08","date_gmt":"2012-08-25T15:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=12455"},"modified":"2016-03-14T23:52:22","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T06:52:22","slug":"a-man-once-tried-to-raise-his-son-as-a-native-speaker-in-klingon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2012\/08\/a-man-once-tried-to-raise-his-son-as-a-native-speaker-in-klingon\/","title":{"rendered":"A Man Once Tried to Raise His Son as a Native Speaker in Klingon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Today I found out<\/a> a man once tried to raise his son as a native speaker in Klingon.<\/p>\n

The man in question is computational linguist Dr. d\u2019Armond Speers.\u00a0 Speers is actually not a huge Start Trek fan himself. Indeed, many Klingon language enthusiasts aren\u2019t, contrary to popular perception.\u00a0 They tend to be language lovers fascinated by constructed languages, of which Klingon is a relatively thriving one, hence why they gravitate towards it. Speers became fascinated with the Klingon language after reading a flyer on a bulletin board at Georgetown\u00a0where he was studying linguistics. The flyer was advertising the Klingon Language Institute (KLI), founded by Dr. Larence M. Schoen.\u00a0 \u201cI thought to myself, \u2018A new language.\u2019 The fact that it was a constructed language really appealed to me. It sounded like fun,\u201d said Speers.<\/p>\n

He soon became one of the more famous members of KLI when he decided to experiment with trying to teach his son Alec to be a native speaker of Klingon. He stated of this decision, \u201cI was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language.\u201d<\/p>\n

So as not to cause Alec to have potential learning disabilities and to make sure his son could fully integrate into society without language problems, Speers\u2019 wife, who was fully behind Speers\u2019 experiment, always spoke English to the child. (Lack of an adequate language for your brain to use before the age of 5-ish can severely stunt a person\u2019s mental capacity and causes extremely detrimental learning disabilities in later life, even if a language is eventually learned. Through much of human history, this is largely why deaf people were once considered mentally deficient, even though with an adequate language taught to them at an early age, like a sign language, they are just as intelligent as anyone else on average.\u00a0 For more on this, see:\u00a0 How Deaf People Think<\/a>.\u00a0 Incidentally, Speers\u2019 dissertation was on the topic of sign language, Representation of American Sign Language for Machine Translation<\/a><\/em>.)<\/p>\n

In any event, unlike his wife, Speers almost exclusively spoke to Alec in Klingon.\u00a0 He even would sing the Klingon Imperial Anthem,\u00a0May the Empire Endure,<\/em> as a bedtime lullaby to the boy, which his son soon picked up and would also sing.\u00a0 You can hear a recording of Alec singing this here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This experiment went on for about three years, during which time, as you might imagine, Speers was given a lot of funny looks in public as he\u2019d converse with Alec.\u00a0 At first when people would ask what language he was speaking, Speers would respond, \u201cspeaking Klingon\u201d, but after getting a lot of dirty looks and comments for this, he switched to just saying, \u201cspeaking a constructed language\u201d, which generally would forestall potential negative remarks.<\/p>\n

Despite certain people being aghast that a father would do this, thinking it perhaps detrimental to a child, Speers, being a language expert, had a different view on it. \u201cMy feeling is that it\u2019s good for people in general to know more than one language. You get different viewpoints and perspectives on things, and there is evidence to suggest that kids who are bilingual do better academically, whether their second language is a constructed language or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the limitation of the language, Speers claimed, \u201cI\u2019ve been able to say almost everything I\u2019ve needed to say to Alec in Klingon\u2026 One of the reasons I find the Klingon language so interesting is that because the vocabulary and grammar is so limited, you really have to think to figure out how you\u2019re going to say something.\u201d For instance, \u201cWhen I ask him to turn out the lights, I say the Klingon for \u2018make it dark\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

This joy found in the difficulty in saying things in Klingon over English didn\u2019t rub off on his son, and Alec eventually resisted speaking the language, as Speers anticipated in the beginning.\u00a0 \u201cThere\u2019s going to come a time when he\u2019s going to stop making the effort to speak Klingon because it\u2019ll be easier for him to speak English.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speers was also the only person who would speak Klingon to Alec and the boy never saw Star Trek during this experiment, so didn\u2019t ever see anyone but his father speaking it.\u00a0 As everyone else spoke English, Speers stated when Alec was about three years old, \u201cHe stopped listening to me when I spoke in Klingon. It was clear that he didn\u2019t enjoy it, and I didn\u2019t want to make it into a problem, so I switched to English\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Today the teenage Alec no longer is fluent in Klingon and reportedly can\u2019t even pick out the meaning of individual words of the language.<\/p>\n

The Klingon Imperial Anthem,\u00a0May the Empire Endure, sung to Alec as a lullaby is:<\/p>\n

taHjaj wo\u2019 \u2019ej taHjaj voDLeHma\u2019\u00a0 (May the empire endure, and may our emperor endure.)
\nwItoy\u2019mo\u2019 vaj nuquvmoHjaj ta\u2019 (We serve him, so that he may honor us.)
\nDun wo\u2019maj \u2019ej Qochchugh vay\u2019 (Our empire is wonderful, and if anyone disagrees,)
\nvaj DaSmeymaj bIngDaq chaH DIbeQmoHchu\u2019 jay\u2019! (We will crush them beneath our boots!)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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