In the Wider World

The Story of Klingon

Course 1 · Chapter 8 · In the Wider World

By the 2000s Klingon was no longer only a fandom language. It was on screen in new series, built into software, taught by apps and mentioned by officials. This chapter follows Klingon out of the fan community and asks how real each of those appearances was.

On Screen

The Next Generation. The character Worf is Klingon, and in the episode "A Matter of Honor" Klingon crew members speak untranslated Klingon. Picard and Dax are depicted as having learned Klingon.
Discovery (2017). Netflix announced Klingon subtitles for the whole first season. They were translated by Lieven Litaer and used romanised spelling, not Klingon script. When the series moved to Paramount+ in 2021, the subtitles were lost.
Strange New Worlds. In season 4, episode 3 ("Human Best Friend"), the character Number One, played by Rebecca Romijn, sings a song in Klingon.

The sources I read said nothing specific about Enterprise or Deep Space Nine, nor about the design of Klingons in Discovery, so this chapter does not cover them.

In Software

Where	What Wikipedia says
Bing Translator	Microsoft's translator supports Klingon, but handled words and phrases in its training data and was "not well tuned" for Klingon's prefixes and suffixes
Wikipedia logo	The 2003–2010 puzzle-globe logo included a Klingon character; it was replaced in 2010 with a Ge'ez script character
Minecraft	The Java edition has a Klingon language setting
Fonts	The pIqaD script lives in Unicode's private-use area, with fonts such as Constructium and Unifont CSUR; a proposal by Michael Everson is cited
Nokia, 2013	An April Fools' joke claimed the Nokia Pure font had been localised for Klingon

Duolingo

The most visible step was Duolingo's Klingon course. A beta opened on 15 March 2018 and was built over about three years by volunteers led by Felix Malmenbeck, with development starting in 2015. Duolingo spokesperson Michaela Kron said that there were only an estimated 30 to 50 fluent Klingon speakers and that the course was not designed to produce fluency. The lead creator credited Star Trek: Discovery with renewing interest.

Why It Stayed in Beta Duolingo offered to promote the course from beta, but its developers declined until the software could handle Klingon properly. The problems were the case-sensitive spelling and the apostrophe, which Duolingo's software treated as punctuation instead of a consonant (Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 gave the language-side reasons).

2009

Simon & Schuster and Ultralingua release electronic Klingon software, including the iPhone app (Chapter 3).

2011

EuroTalk's "Learn Klingon", approved by CBS and Okrand, the first course written in pIqaD.

2018

Duolingo's beta course opens on 15 March, and is the one most learners meet today.

Stories of Official Use

Multnomah County, Oregon (2007). A report said the county was hiring Klingon translators for its mental health programme. Wikipedia adds that the county later called its release a "mistake", so the story is better described as a news item that went wrong than as a real service. (Chapter 6 called it "reportedly"; this is the follow-up.)
Welsh Government (July 2015). It issued a written statement in Klingon in reply to a question about UFO sightings.
Copyright. CBS Studios owns the copyright on the official dictionary and other canonical descriptions. The Wikipedia article notes that dictionary entries as facts are not copyrightable, but the formatting, examples and instructions are.

Real, Joke, or Both? Many of these appearances are playful: a puzzle-globe character, an April Fools' font, a UFO reply. But the course, the software and the subtitles are practical work. Klingon is an unusual case of a language where fun and real use stay mixed together, and each appearance has to be judged on its own.

Not Yet Verified The sources did not cover Klingon in courts or schools, so this chapter does not. A search I made for Google Translate and Unicode rejection returned nothing, so I have made no claim about either. The Wikipedia text I read did not describe a Unicode proposal being rejected. The date of one news item on the Duolingo launch conflicted with the rest (2022 against 2018); I used 2018, which several sources agree on.

Sources for This Chapter

Wikipedia, "Klingon language".
News reports on the Duolingo course (CBS News, Space.com, The Next Web and others), via a web search.

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1

Give three places where Klingon appears on screen or in software, with one fact about each.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

Explain why Duolingo's Klingon course stayed in beta, and what the reason shows about the language.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Sort the "official use" stories into those that look real and those that look like jokes or mistakes, and give a reason for each.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Screen: Worf and "A Matter of Honor"; Discovery's Klingon subtitles (2017, later lost); Strange New Worlds song.
Software: Bing Translator, Minecraft, pIqaD fonts in Unicode's private-use area.
Courses: Simon & Schuster (2009), EuroTalk (2011), Duolingo beta (15 March 2018).
Official use: Multnomah County (called a mistake); the Welsh Government reply (2015).

Coming Next The Story of Klingon, Chapter 9 asks how far the language reflects the Klingon people, and how much of it is invented society.