Re: Please welcome . . .

On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 09:42:42AM +0000, Peter Bleackley wrote:
> I do know that tlhIngan Hol is designed to sound harsh to English speakers,
> and has a phonemic inventory unknown in human languages. It's word order is
> (I think) OVS - not unknown, but very rare. And, of course, there would
> have been nobody else to speak it to.
Eh, that last point is not that important.  As long as there is someone to
speak it to and they use it exclusively and consistently, the kid will
learn - even if he later decides not to use the language, he'll have
a firm basis in it.  Many parents do OPOL - One Parent, One Language -
in an environment where everybody speaks the majority language except
the one parent who speaks the minority language, and the children still grow
up as fluent bilinguals - not perfectly balanced, but that's rare no
matter how favorable the environment.

It's also not true that bilingual children learn the majority language
slower than monolinguals, although it's a common (and seemingly logical)
misconception.  Even prior to age 6 most are perfectly able to keep up
with their monolingual peers.

With respect to tlhIngan Hol, it could have been the paucity of vocabulary;
it would be very hard to speak to the chlid exclusively in it becuase there
just aren't the words.  Non-native speakers of a natlang who initially
have an incomplete vocabulary can at least look up words for next time
and build over time, learning just ahead of their chlidren; but with
Klingon the words just aren't there.

It's true the phonemic inventory is odd, but I bet ANADEW applies :)
Among the oddities are the fact that it has dental /n/ <n> and /t/ <t>,
which also shows up in affricates /tS)/ <ch> and /tK)/ <tlh>, but
retroflex /d`/ <D> and /s`/ <S>.  It even has the voiced affricate /dZ)/ <j>
with the dental articulation on /d/ even though that standalone sound doesn't
occur.  It does have a fairly normal triangular five-vowel system with
/A/, /E/, /I/, /o/, and /u/.

-Mark