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Speakers of Klingon gather in Essington

"Please, Captain, not in front of the Klingons." - Mr. Spock, preventing Capt. James T. Kirk from hugging him, in "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier"

"Please, Captain, not in front of the Klingons."

- Mr. Spock, preventing Capt. James T. Kirk from hugging him, in "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier"

Why would somebody attend a Klingon conference?

Specifically, the 17th annual Klingon Language Institute conference (qep'a' wa'maH SochDich in Klingon)?

There are no real Klingons, of course. They are a fictional empire of warrior aliens in Star Trek. But there is a real Klingon language, tlhIngan Hol. It sounds like a recording played backward of a German shepherd gargling yogurt.

People study it, speak it, and gather each year at the lush and verdant Comfort Inn in Essington to trade stories, talk tlhIngan Hol, and -

Wait a minute. Why?

"I like the way the language makes me think," says Alan Anderson, 48, of Kokomo, Ind. "We play in the culture."

Mark Shoulson, 42, of Lawrenceville, N.J., is assistant director, or boQ Du', of the KLI. "One of the attractions," he says, "is to be with all these great people and watch the entire room literally collapse on the floor with laughter from time to time."

Esther, his 12-year-old daughter, says, "The main reason I come is that there's a roomful of me. And I need that in my life."

Make way for Klingons

"I came to it through being a Star Trek fan," says Chris Lipscombe, 32, of Cincinnati. "Then someone gave me a copy of Conversational Klingon, and it changed my life."

Tad Stauffer, 30, of Havertown, who designed this year's T-shirts, says, "I started out as a Star Trek fan, but then I got hooked on the language itself."

Elizabeth Lawrence, 22, of Caroga Lake, N.Y., says, "I never met anyone with a brain like mine before." Last year after several attempts, she passed the beginner-level tlhIngan Hol test, administered at the qep'a'. All of a sudden, she bursts into a najmoHwI', or lullabye, she wrote herself, in tlhIngan Hol ("Sleep, little warrior, / Hear that we sing / This battle song is all about you . . .").

The KLI qep'a', which began in 1993, has been meeting for the last five years at the Comfort Inn.

The head guy, or vavoy, Lawrence Schoen, 50, says, "Why? I live in Blue Bell, and it's cheap and convenient." It was Schoen who first thought of bringing together the world's widely scattered tlhIngan Hol speakers. They may be modest in number, but they're everywhere.

"There's a global speakers' map," says Lawrence, "and we have tlhIngan Hol speakers on every continent - including Antarctica."

Speaking Klingon in Antarctica - there's a concept.

This group gets together to twist tongues, brains, and funnybones, and the profound, silly, cerebral jokes flash like a bat'leth in the hands of a jagh. This year, it's a frighteningly brilliant, doughty, eccentric band of around 15, but some years it has swollen to a mighty 40-plus. Some, in the past, "take the vow" and speak no English all weekend. Mostly, they speak whatever they wish, with a lot of tlhIngan Hol thrown in.

Meetings are eventful. Each attendee must undergo two challenges, devised by Schoen. The first is a phrase on which the attendee must give an extemporaneous speech or performance in tlhIngan Hol. For example: tlhepQe' jeQ ("self-confident saliva"), or the ever-popular not tlhIjmo' quy' Ip ("because vomit never apologizes").

Should the attendee survive, then comes the qad Hom cha', or "major challenge" - a whole sentence, such as ghangh tennuSlI' Dap ("Your uncle's nonsense ended prematurely").

There are games of skill, when the attendees split into qughwI ("Jets") and norgh ("Sharks") to play Klingon Pictionary. On Saturday is the "cabaret," where people perform. Two attendees once did Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" in tlhIngan Hol.

Where Klingon comes from

The high point is when Marc Okrand makes his annual appearance, which he'll do Saturday. Okrand invented Klingon. Again: Why?

In the 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture, actor James Doohan, who played engineer Scotty, says a few guttural words in the Klingon tongue. The problem was that no such tongue existed. So, for the 1984 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the call went out to Okrand, an accomplished linguist, and he constructed an entire language - sounds, vocabulary, and grammar. He sketched out a tantalizing bit of Klingon culture, too (since all languages bring culture with them), for folks to flesh out.

As languages go, this is a doozy. It's one long linguistic joke, incorporating sounds alien to English (that tlh in tlhIngan Hol is sounded by coughing lightly while pressing the tongue to the roof of the mouth . . . good luck!), and lots of the most outlandish structures found in some odd Earthling languages.

Asked by e-mail why he returns each year, Okrand says the folks at the qep'a' are much more fluent than he is. It's "the satisfaction of seeing something that I developed take on a life of its own and thrive without me - sort of the feeling that a proud parent has . . . when the child can do something even better than the parent can." But the main reason "is that the qep'a' is fun. The people attending are creative, interesting, funny, and just plain smart."

Which they truly are. Each year, they beseech Okrand for additions to the tlhIngan Hol dictionary. Last year, they begged him for a word for pudding. It came out as wIlpuq, pronounced pretty close to "will puke."

Which suggests another feature of tlhIngan Hol: the jokes hiding in the words themselves. When beseeched for words for human toes, Okrand said the big toe is mar, the second Hom, the middle roS, the fourth nan, and the pinkie toe Qay'. As in "This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home," etc. Okrand said nothing and just let them get it.

Folks have taken this passion in astonishing directions. "I and a lot of people are interested in fleshing out the vestigial Klingon culture," says Lipscombe. "All we see on the show are warriors, but there must be Klingon farmers, accountants, Klingon shipbuilders. I've heard from people who are students of Klingon religion. One guy is designing alcoholic drinks."

Shoulson: "I am heartened by this news."

Vavoy Schoen says, "The stealth purpose behind the entire qep'a' is really the motto of the Klingon Language Institute: qo'mey poSmoH Hol," or "Language opens worlds."

"It's a culture of suspended disbelief," Lawrence says. "That's what we do."

Everyday Klingon

nuqneH Hello (literally, "What do you want?").

majQa'! Well done!

Qapla' Success! (As in "good luck," "take it easy.")

Heghlu'meH QaQ jajvam Today is a good day to die.

tera'nganbej neH jIH 'ach 'e' vIQIjlaH I'm really only an Earthling, but that's a long story.

QuchwIj yIyach Fondle my forehead!

maj chongqu' tI nguv bey'vetlh Oh, that flower arrangement is so fabulous!

Hijol Beam me aboard.

nuqDaq yuch Dapol Where do you keep the chocolate?

SOURCES: Klingon Language Institute; Sonja's Linguistic Surrealscape EndText