Re: Ugly Klingon was Re: PHONO: lateral plosive

On Monday 24 March 2003 03:33 pm, Karapcik, Mike wrote:
>         He *purposefully* made it ugly?
>         I always thought it was an alternative to diacritics.
>         Purposefully?
>         Ok......
        Well, I suppose that would be an added bonus. He's also quoted as saying that
capitals are there to remind people that the pronunciation is different.
>
>         On that topic, does anyone know anything about Marc Okrand? I've
> heard he used to teach at USF New College (I go to school and work at the
> USF Tampa (main) branch). Was he any good. Has he written anything else
> interesting?
        Well, he did his PhD thesis in 1977 on Mutsun, an extinct Native American
language. While the thesis itself (to the best of my knowledge) is not
available online, a brief but interesting comparison of Klingon and Mutsun
can be found at:
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~dick/Summaries/Languages/MutsunKlingonComparison.pdf

> Is Klingon his "claim to fame"?
        That's pretty much it, AFAIK. Too bad that he isn't more into conlanging; I
think he only did Klingon for the money. Not that money is a bad thing, mind
you--who wouldn't want to be paid to conlang? :) But I sometimes get the
impression that he's just a little embarrassed by all the fuss Klingon has
created.

> (I know he also did Atlantean
> from Disney's movie. Frankly, the language aspect was the one thing about
> that movie that made me cringe. Atlanteans speak PIE (ok...), so by
> extension they are fluent in *all* daughter languages (not ok...). The
> "Teach Yourself Atlantean" on the DVD was sooo veeery laaame.)
        I suspect that he was responsible only for the language, not the plot.
        :Peter
--
Oh what a tangled web they weave who try a new word to conceive!

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