Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Book of the Day - Klingon Dictionary


The Klingons are my favorite Star Trek characters. They have the coolest facial hair and they're stylin' those Gene Simmons topknots while swaggering around with outlaw space-biker bluster. Now I can converse with my buddies with a book I unearthed while rearranging our science fiction shelves:

The Klingon Dictionary: English/Klingon, Klingon/English:The Official Guide to Klingon Words and Phrases, by Marc Okrand, NY: Pocket, 1992. Okrand developed the prototypic Klingon language and culture for the Star Trek movies and for the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation and in these pages he provides pronunciation guides, commands in "clipped Klingon", lots of grammatical advice and the most fun section "A Selected List of Useful Klingon phrases". Here's a few of the spiciest:

Where can I get my shoes cleaned? (NOOK-dak WAK-wij vi-lam-KHA-chokh-mokh)
Your nose is shiny (boch GHICH-raj)
Your ship is a garbage scow (vekkh-DOOJ okh DOOJ-lij-E)
Does it bite? (chop-A)
Where do you keep the chocolate? (MOST IMPORTANT!) (NOOK-dak yooch da-POL).

Time to beam up.

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