Word: klingon
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Arika Okrent is fluent in English, Hungarian, American sign language and ... Klingon. (O.K., so she has only first-level certification in Star Trek-speak.) Okrent, a linguistics scholar, spent the better part of five years perusing library card catalogs and attending colorful conferences to learn about languages created by one person and, in some cases, adopted by thousands. Her new book, In the Land of Invented Languages, chronicles the scientists, idealists and eccentrics who tried - and failed - to create the perfect parlance from scratch. TIME spoke with Okrent about defending the cranks from the critics, ordering sandwiches in Esperanto...
Your book includes an index of more than 500 invented languages, though you're quick to point out that no one really knows how many there are. How did you decide which languages to explore? I knew more about the famous ones, like Esperanto and Klingon. But the others I discovered in libraries. Every library you go into will have these little pamphlets self-published by some dreamer with a plan. I got very curious about the lives of the people who devoted themselves to these doomed projects...
Just how silly is Google? Its search interface offers translations into Klingon, Elmer Fudd-speak, Pig Latin - even the lingo of the Muppets' Swedish Chef. On past April Fools' days the site has pitched Google Gulp, a drink to make searchers smarter, pigeon rank, a system whereby pecking order would determine search results, and Google Romance, a satirical site boasting a sizzling "soulmate search." The web giant has even playfully offered jobs on the moon...
...match” in “Datamatch” works. Unfortunately for those who planned on using the HCS questionnaire to find a partner who shares a love of the Kong’s crab rangoon, romantic dinners at Annenberg, and the language of the Klingon race, quiz submissions closed at 11:59pm on Valentine’s Eve. The happily coupled Melendez offered these words of advice to those still left searching after missing last night’s deadline: “Keep looking around, keep trying,” he said. And, he added...
...stage. All of a sudden, I'm getting to the end of the conversation. Dave McKean and I were doing a Mirrormask thing and we're ready to leave the stage. I look up and they have a bodyguard line of 30 Klingons. They're six-foot six and four-feet wide and they have the foreheads and they had linked arms. We were being lead off behind a human wall -a Klingon wall-of Klingon warriors. And I thought, how good does...