Skip to main content

star trek - Which language is more fully developed, Klingon or Quenya/Sindarin?


It is well-known that Tolkien's forte is linguistics and he created various fictional languages in his writings. Although Klingon language started off kind of slow, it's emerged as a viable language, even known to be taught in some schools and is readily spoken and conventions and the like.


Which language is the most developed, one of Tolkien's such as Quenya/Sidarian? Or Klingon?


For the purposes of this question, developed means being able to use it conversationally or written like a regular language like English or German.



Answer



Definitely Klingon



Although Tolkien's writings on Quenya and Sindarin are extensive, there simply isn't enough to carry on realistic conversations; unless you're willing to go into some of the fan attempts to flesh the language out, you and your Elvish-speaking partner are basically limited to quoting passages of the Legendarium at each other.


Tolkien himself actually acknowledged this in Letter 297 (emphasis his):



It should be obvious that if it is possible to compose fragments of verse in Quenya and Sindarin, those languages (and their relations one to another) must have reached a fairly high degree of organization – though of course, far from completeness, either in vocabulary, or in idiom.


[...]


Also of interest to some, and agreeable to me, would be an historical grammar of Quenya and Sindarin and a fairly extensive etymological vocabulary of these languages of course far from 'complete', but not limited to words found in the tales. But I do not intend to engage in these projects, until my mythology and legends are completed.


The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien 297: To 'Mr. Rang' (draft). August 1967



Klingon, on the other hand, is quite a bit more extensively-developed, to the point where you actually can read (and perform) Shakespeare "in the original Klingon."


John McWhorter, professor of linguistics (among other things) at Columbia University, discusses fictional constructed languages ("conlangs") in this Ted-Ed video, and comes to the same conclusion:






Relevant transcript (emphasis mine):



McWhorter: The truth is, though, that Elvish is a sketch for a real language than a whole one. For Tolkien, Elvish was a hobby rather than an attempt to create something people could actually speak. Much of the Elvish that characters in the Lord of the Rings movies speak has been made up since Tolkien by dedicated fans of Elvish, based on guesses as to what Tolkien would have constructed. That's the best we can do for Elvish, because there are no actual Elves around to speak it for us. But the modern conlangs go further: Dothraki, Na'vi, and Klingon are developed enough that you can actually speak them.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

futurama - How much time is lost in 'Time Keeps on Slippin''

In time Keeps on Slippin' , Farnsworth creates a basketball team which he matures by abusing Chronitons. This leads to time skipping forward by random, but ever increasing amounts. How much time was skipped in this way? Answer Unfortunately, I don't think a good estimate can be made for this, for two reasons: Many of the time skips move forward by an indeterminate amount of time. At one point, the Professor mentions localized regions of space skipping forward much more than others. We then see two young boys on the street below complaining about having to pay social security, only to suddenly become senior citizens and start complaining about wanting their money. Thus, each individual could have experienced a different amount of time skippage.

harry potter - How could Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra?

I want to be very careful about how I ask this question – I am not asking How did Voldemort die? [CLOSED] Below the text is the relevant passages from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows if anyone wants to review them (I'm sorry for the amount of text). How did Expelliarmus beat Avada Kedavra and kill Voldemort? I feel the reason Harry's Expelliarmus overpowered Voldemort's Avada Kedavra curse has to do with who was master of the Elder Wand and how the Elder Wand works. I've always had trouble understanding fully how the Elder Wand works, though. How much did the fact that Voldemort never truly won or mastered the Elder Wand factor into how Expelliarmus reacted to Avada Kedavra and caused Avada Kedavra to rebound and kill Voldemort? An answer based in book canon would be especially welcome, but any canon source really is fine. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he, too, yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco’s wand: ‘ Avada Kedavra !’ ‘ Expelliarmus !...

Is there good canon evidence for the "Nightmare Matrix"?

On the Matrix wiki, there's an article about the Nightmare Matrix which says: The Nightmare Matrix was the second prototype Matrix, designed by The Architect after the massive failure of the Paradise Matrix in the hope that human minds would more readily accept an imperfect world with suffering. Unlike the first version, this Matrix instituted a basic cause-and-effect programming and forcibly made those connected to it accept the program. Vamp Prime, a possible remnant of the Nightmare Matrix. It also featured programs that resembled mythical evil creatures in various human mythologies such as vampires, werewolves, zombies, aliens, etc. It also failed, but many of the programs who were designed for it survived deletion in exile. The Merovingian and his wife, Persephone may have had their roots in this version of the Matrix. Upon its failure, the Merovingian started a smuggling ring of programs and information to provide a haven for exiles that would last for 6 cycles in the final ...

story identification - Anime with a boy hiring a creature from a stone, meets a man named Dante and starts a journey to collect crystals

I am from India, this anime or animated series (I can't remember this was made by the Japan or other countries) was aired between 2009 and 2012 probably in Jetix/Disney XD (but I'm not sure). This anime starts with a boy (the main character, I forgot his name) who find a stone (or crystal like thing) in his dad's property, his dad was missing that time. Some day he accidentally hire a creature/monster from that stone. Other day some creature attack him and he was saved by his creature and the story begins. In his journey to solve the mystery he meets a middle aged man 'Dante' (probably that was the name; this is the only character name I can remember). He had also some stone. After that they meet with one girl and a women (one of the girls is same age with the main boy character and probably will become his partner as the story goes on). Another women probably Dante's partner. Four of them started their journey to collect all the stone/crystal. They are collecti...