It's an alien life form,
But not as we know it,
Not as we know it,
Not as we know it.

It's an alien life form,
But not as we know it,
Not as we know it, Jim.

There's No Klingon Word for Hello

...

Despite the fact that more than 250,000 copies of Okrand's Klingon dictionary have been sold, very few people know how the language really works. There are maybe 20 or 30 people who can hold their own in a live, unscripted Klingon conversation and a few hundred or so who are pretty good with written Klingon.

...

Klingon sentence structure is about as complex as it gets. Most people are familiar with the idea that verb endings can indicate person and number. In Spanish, the -o suffix on a verb like hablar (to speak) indicates a first-person singular subject (hablo—I speak) while the -amos suffix indicates a first-person plural subject (hablamos—we speak). But Klingon uses prefixes rather than suffixes, and instead of having six or seven of them, like most romance languages, it has 29. There are so many because they indicate not only the person and number of the subject (who is doing) but also of the object (whom it is being done to). In the "Live long and prosper" translation above, for example, the Da- on SIQ indicates a second-person subject and a third-person object ("You endure it"), and the bI- on the verb chep indicates a second-person subject and no object ("You prosper").

As if that weren't complicated enough, Klingon also has a large set of suffixes. Attached to the end of the verbs SIQ and chep is the ending -jaj, which expresses "a desire or wish on the part of the speaker that something take place in the future." Klingon has 36 verb suffixes and 26 noun suffixes that express everything from negation to causality to possession to how willing a speaker is to vouch for the accuracy of what he says. By piling on these suffixes, one after the other, you can pack a lot of meaning on to a single word in Klingon—words like nuHegh'eghrupqa'moHlaHbe'law'lI'neS, which translates roughly to: They are apparently unable to cause us to prepare to resume honorable suicide (in progress).

I'm too lazy to italicize all the Klingon here.

Nice Ewan kilt links! I found some Ed Quinn from all that.

On the phone with a company that will want to charge me hundreds if not thousands of dollars to help me with my job search. I just want the free stuff, and then I bail.

Happy birthday, Glam!

It makes me happy that you were born.

I guess she was trolling through my browser history and b.org was the most interesting thing to look at.

She doesn't know your supervillain mad scientists pseud, though, right?

I don't think so, but it wouldn't be too hard to put 2 + 2 together if she remembers that we once had a dog named Gudanov. Though that was before her time.

Happy birthday, GC!

Happy Birthday, GC!

Harper's Island: I was browsing the TWOP thread for it and somebody mentioned seeing CKR in the last episode. Okay, I somehow missed seeing him, did any of you guys see him?

She doesn't know your supervillain mad scientists pseud, though, right?

She would probably guess that hardly anyone else has a daughter with the same name as her, as well...

I am so full! We had going-away pizza, AND the person going away brought in these ridiculous red velvet bon bons.

She would probably guess that hardly anyone else has a daughter with the same name as her, as well...

Actually I was referring to his alternate identity in Sang Sacre. But if his nickname for Emaryn is "evil minion" then it might give him away.

She would probably guess that hardly anyone else has a daughter with the same name as her, as well...

Yeah, there is that too.

I wonder why my computer is taking 15 minutes to delete 11 megabytes.