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Re: Loxian

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Monday, March 13, 2006, 22:45
On 3/12/06, Joseph B. <darkmoonman@...> wrote:
> Klingon (thlIgan) might as well be copyrighted as none but Okrand are > blessed enough to create new words.
That's "tlhIngan Hol". And there's no official stance on who's allowed to do what; there is merely consensus. The particular subset of the Klingonist community that has grown up around the KLI has chosen to treat Klingon as a genuine, incompletely-understood language. (To the degree that it is already complete in Marc Okrand's head, of course, this is 100% true. :)) The Klingonists are linguists studying it, and not even the most knowledgeable have anything like complete or authoritative knowledge of it. What they do have, on rare occasions, is access to an informant (Dr. Okrand, or in the conceit, "Maltz" via Okrand) who can answer questions. In that situation, I think you'll agree that any linguist who made up his own words, claiming that they were part of the language under study, would be a fraud? Other fans of Klingon are free to do as they like (short of publishing anything that claims to be "Klingon" without Paramount's permission, of course), but neologisms aren't likely to be accepted outside of a small subset of the Klingonist community. On 3/12/06, Chris Peters <beta_leonis@...> wrote:
> I've been told (I don't know if this is accurate) that Marc Okrand owns the > copyright to the Klingon language. The name "Klingon" is of course owned by > the Star Trek production folks, but the language itself is leased to them > under license, if I recall correctly. I might be wrong.
I had assumed that the creation of the Klingon language was work for hire performed by Dr. Okrand for Paramount, in which case that company would own everything. But at the very least they have refrained from doing anything with the property without his involvement; even in the episodes where the language was butchered, they at least used his book as a starting point. :) The Klingon Language Institute's quarterly journal, HolQeD, is expressly licensed by Paramount; the KLI had to jump through flaming legal hoops to get that permission, basically demonstrating that they're not out to make a profit; they're just a bunch of weirdos who get off on studying a fictional language. -- Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>