A review of ‘From Elvish to Kinglinon', by Michael Adams et al

This book caught my eye when it was mentioned in an issue of Babel magazine, after a fascinating article on ‘how to speak Venusian’. This article posed questions such as, do aliens speak languages? If so, what would their languages be like? And, how do humans invent languages? I hoped that this book would answer these and the many other queries that I had.

 

From elvish to Klingon, by Michael Adams, not only addressed many of these questions but it went further than that and not only talked about invented languages, like Klingon, but also reinvented languages. Chapter 8 was particularly informative about this as it did not discuss nerd culture, but instead considered whether reinvented languages should be classed the same way as completely constructed languages. For example, Hebrew was classed as a ‘dead’ language because it had no mother tongue speakers between 1000 and 1800, although it was used in religion and literature. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, a lexicographer, established the Academy of the Hebrew Language and re-vernacularized the language, adding thousands of new words to modernise the language and created Modern Hebrew. Although Modern Hebrew is based heavily on ancient Hebrew and other natural languages, do you think that it should be classified as an invented language?

Modern Hebrew, and other revitalized languages, was the subject of chapter 8, however each chapter is very different. Each is written by a different academic, allowing each chapter to be very different and detailed. Adams also wrote a detailed appendices including a translation of hamlet in Klingon (see below) and some additional information about gaming languages.

To conclude, I am very surprised that such a popular book is so detailed about sociolinguistics and the languages themselves, it may be because this book does have a section for everybody. However, I see this book as more of a collection of academic essays, but I definitely would recommend it to anyone who is interested in 'exploring invented languages'.

This is the famous ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy translated into Klingon:

taH pagh taHbe’. DaH mu’tlheghvam vIqelnIS.
quv’a', yabDaq San vaQ cha, pu’ je SIQDI’?
pagh, Seng bIQ’a'Hey SuvmeH nuHmey SuqDI’,
‘ej, Suvmo’, rInmoHDI’? Hegh. Qong — Qong neH –
‘ej QongDI’, tIq ‘oy’, wa’SanID Daw”e’ je
cho’nISbogh porghDaj rInmoHlaH net Har.
yIn mevbogh mIwvam’e’ wIruchqangbej.
Hegh. Qong. QongDI’ chaq naj. toH, waQlaw’ ghu’vam!
HeghDaq maQongtaHvIS, tugh nuq wInajlaH,
volchaHmajvo’ jubbe’wI’ bep wIwoDDI’;
‘e’ wIqelDI’, maHeDnIS. Qugh DISIQnIS,
SIQmoHmo’ qechvam. Qugh yIn nI’moH ‘oH

Here is an article, written by Michael Adams, on a similar topic to his book. It is entitled: From Elvish To Klingon: What's The Point Of A Fictional Language?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-adams/elvish-to-klingon-fictional-language_b_1147794.html#s541957&title=Nadsat