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Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/19/09
11/19/09
Loads of people know, learn, and teach Latin, but it's not a "real" language, because ... Italians don't speak it? Okay, because there is no "home country" for it any more. Hebrew (I've heard but can't verify, no flames on this plz) is a constructed language, but is accepted as real because it's the official langauage of Israel.
The rule of thumb is, the difference between a dialect and a language ... is an army. Don't the Klingons have an army?
11/19/09
[memory-alpha.org]
11/19/09
While I concur about teaching a fictional and daresay, useless "language", I do believe real languages other than English should be taught to kids, especially in the U.S. It's a big hobbling factor for the U.S. to not have exposure to different syntaxes and structure. Sadly, the U.S. is more stupid for it.
Just a side note.
11/19/09
English is actually my third language, and I value the first two beyond words. The point is that they contain syntax and structure that does carry over into "real" languages as opposed to some of the elements of "fictional" languages.
11/19/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
"[...] hindered his son's social development by keeping focus away from a real language? I'm all for teaching foreign languages early on, but lets make it ones that are spoken on this planet, please."
Then people teaching their children Latin should be burned at the stake. Obviously Latin has a history on this planet, but I would imagine that more people speak fluent Klingon these days than know 10 words in Latin. In 50, 100, 200 years that number will increase even more.
Even better, how about ASL? That's not the mother's native tongue but she dared to teach him a non-spoken language? Blasphemy!
This. of course. is just taking your harsh criticisms of this man literally and trying to point out how ridiculous your accusations are of ruining the kids life. If the child ends up living in a cave and welding a Klingon forehead to his own, and speaks only that language for the rest of his days (or more realistically his language and social abilities don't develop as as other children his age) then you can begin judging people for how they raise their kids doing something as silly as this.
11/19/09
11/19/09
This includes, japenese, forms of chinese ( mandarin and cantonese), German, Hebrew, among many others. English is a melting pot language. It has no single root.
11/19/09
11/19/09
It is if X when Y then Z.
If I teach a kid Klingon but he has no outside reinforcement of he is going to go with English because he gets more reinforcement in using it then I drop teaching him Klingon.
You can trade out X with anything and the rule still applies. It could be Latin, it could even be an "living" language like Spanish, French, etc. If the kid isn't getting the reinforcement from using it during those developing years he is still going to drop it. The kid would still be 15 years old and not know a drop of Latin, Spanish, French ect.
11/19/09
Oy vey.
11/19/09
11/19/09
He did nothing wrong and some of you have said some pretty awful things without even knowing the child or the man or the whole situation.
It is quite clear he wasn't just speaking Klingon, and that the kid was exposed to English just as much, and that the majority of linguists agree that exposure to more languages makes for a healthier brain, not a hindered one. Yes Klingon is not a language that developed "naturally", but it is still a language and is not going to cause some kind of lasting harm and in all likelihood will actually make the kid better at picking up languages.
I bet a lot of you would be eating your words if you actually met the man and his child and saw them interact. A little ashamed here at some of the reactions I'm seeing.
11/19/09
It also speaks to taking the time to read the linking articles since one of them had the whole story (although it was another link click away) and the other comments in the thread.
Slightly on a different subject slightly on the same but after I watched Trekkies 2 I also stopped with all of the "guy is going to die a virgin" comments. For one thing I might not be that much of an uber geek about one thing but I'm that much of a super geek on other stuff that there isn't that much difference.
Plus Kroener ended up better off then me. He may have been walking around his High School in a Star Trek outfit in the first movie but by the second one he was married with a great job that he loves. Better then I can say for myself.
11/19/09
I refuse to comment on something I have not fully read to avoid sounding like an idiot. I have never been on the receiving end of a "RTFA" I am proud to say.
11/19/09
I find it hilarious how many times you get a old product shot for the article since there are no pictures of the rumored one and people come back with "looks like the old one".
11/19/09
First off this all happened about 15 years ago.
Speers wanted to see if the child would pick up a constructed language just like he would a traditional language. He had already learned Klingon himself because he saw it as a challenge and he choose to teach the kid Klingon because it had a culture (albeit also constructed) behind it as opposed to Esperanto which was a larger more complete constructed language. He also said that Klingon still represented a challenge to him because he'd have to think about how to say certain things that might not have a direct translation.
The idea was that a second language would still benefit the child later in life and it didn't really matter what the language was when he was a kid. The Mom supported it as did all his friends and family.
The child was exposed to plenty of English. The mom spoke only English and the kid got plenty of it at day care.
[www.washingtoncitypaper.com]
At two the kid was speaking Klingon and English (well like kids that are 2 speak). Dad was just Vavoy. Some of the ages are kinda hard to piece together but it sounds like by 3 the kid had moved completely to English (which the dad knew was inevitable since he was exposed to English much more) and so dad did too.
[www.wired.com]
At 15 the kid has none of the "ill effects" so many of you predicted. For all intents and purposes he seems as well adjusted as any other kid (as Speers put it in one posting update "the kid isn't a hall monitor"). He doesn't know a lick of Klingon but he is multilingual in other languages that his parents taught him.
Edit: It obviously took me too long to write that since Rosa got in an update in the time. :p
Good to see her add some more to the story since like I said the real one is much better than the shot in the dark one.
11/19/09
Why, oh, why, can't everyone else read the articles, instead of commenting from the hip with their black-and-white judgment about something they are completely ignorant of?
11/19/09
Btw, is there a "google translate" but for klingon anywhere on the net?
11/19/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
It also states *he* only spoke to his son in Klingon. It is not unreasonable to expect that the other people around the boy were not forced to do so.
My most-native tongue is Sámi. And a variation of it that is spoken by less than a few thousand people. Useful? Well, I've met exactly ONE other person in North America who wasn't a relative who speaks it. Having also done the same kind of linguistic studies as Speers, I can tell you that it didn't hinder me at all. By the time I was in school I had easily picked up the English and German I needed, and having the strong linguistic background really helped me excel. Our brains are pretty nifty like that, they don't mind learning words when we're still in the learning word process.
11/19/09
Dude used his kid as an experiment. Granted, it was nothing like shocks to the brain or something weird like that. And this guy didn't teach his son a rare language that the family uses. He taught him a language from a TV show "just to see" if he'd pick it up. The dude is a passionate nerd, which I admire, but it somehow feels just a little wrong to go dicking around with a kids brain "just to see".
I once heard that infants respond more to tone than to words. So, theoretically, I could say to my (hypothetical) child in a sweet loving tone, "You're a little moron aren't you? Yes you are. You're daddies little sack of crap. You're my disgusting ball of feces. Yes you are." and the child would think I'm pleased with him/her.
However, later on in life, I'd find it very difficult to explain to my child why I called him a sack of crap as an infant. To say nothing of what my (hypothetical) wife would (and should) hit me with for pulling something like that.
11/19/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
#tips
11/19/09
You're right the kid didn't know if it was constructed or natural and that was the point. He gave the kid all of the benefit of early exposure to a second language and did it in a way that also challenged himself as a linguist.
11/19/09
The kid will learn what ever you throw at him. I grew up with two languages. Klingon and English is no different than German and English or Spanish and English or Latvian and English.
11/19/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
Just making a point.
11/20/09
Just because he taught me not to call people names doesn't mean that I necessarily practice what he preached. The fact that my calling this guy an asshat wasn't nice, doesn't negate the fact that he was one for doing this.
11/19/09
It's a rather frivolous way to approach an interesting academic question, but there is no way he's hindered his son's social development. First, very kids don't really focus on verbalising in social interaction at that age as much as they do only 2 years later (watch a bunch of 3-yr-olds play together. You'll see). Much of what they communicate can be gleaned through stance, facial expressing, action, and other body language.
Second, and more importantly, up until somewhere around the beginning of adolescence children can acquire new languages very quickly to the point where they can speak them as if they had been speaking them since they first learned to talk. This is why there are bilingual kids from multicultural households. Moreover, immigrant kids pick up English (for example) and speak it like they have all their lives while their parents still struggle with it. As long as they arrive in their new country before the age of 12-ish, you'd never know they were born elsewhere.
When I was little, my mother used to take me along as a translator when she went shopping until she felt strong enough in the language to do it herself. Honestly, kids are little powerhouses when it comes to language. This kid may have a weird dad, but his social development has not been hindered by this silly experiment.
*Disclaimer - I wrote this while drinking my first coffee, so please forgive typos, etc.*
11/19/09
11/19/09
Um, er... Bullshit!
First, he spoke Klingon at the *exclusion* of a real language so he is depriving his son of natural language acquisition and natural father-son interaction.
Second, Klingon is not a language. It is a small group of phonetics created by hollywood types for a tv show that, you know, isn't real. did I mention it isn't a real language?
third, that a child doesn't speak until later on doesn't mean that exposure to language during infancy doesn't help form linguistic pathways for later use. "speaking" Klingon deprives the developing brain of essential exposure to a real language.
11/19/09
I'm troubled that the father said the child seemed to be _beginning_ to learn Klingon. My three year old is not _beginning_ to learn English, he's speaking it like a normal three year old native speaker: very well.
Finally, let's face it, the real social injustice is that this kid has this guy as a father.
*Disclaimer, like the father in the story, I've a post grad qualification in Computational Linguistics and a masters in Linguistics, but hopefully, I'm not a dumbass. Doubtless my kids will tell you a different story*
11/19/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
He spoke Klingon at the 'exclusion' of other languages but no one else did. Even he didn't completely only speak Klingon to the kid. He sang him Klingon lullabies but Dr. Seuss was still in English when he read it for example.
Second, Klingon is surprisingly a language. It started as just Doohan spitting some words down and making the extras pronounce them but when it came time to put it in the movie they hired a linguist to create it around the same rules that 'normal' languages use.
Third, thats exactly why there is nothing wrong with this. Speaking Klingon didn't do any harm, it helped. It formed more pathways. To me (and I assume you) growing up bottle got us bottle so thats all we ever called it. Here bottle got him bottle but so did 'HIvje'. So now he's got an abstract view of what a bottle is and its easier for him to associate with it in different ways. Thats part of the reason adults have more trouble learning new languages. Everything is so ingrained by that point they see a bottle and don't "think" of the bottle in another language they "think" of a bottle in English and than recite the memorized word for bottle.
11/19/09
Another invented language is American Sign Language (ASL), used by hundreds of thousands of people for first language interaction every day. While other sign languages are natural, ASL was invented in the 1800s. All sign languages make use of your same "linguistic pathways" and children appear to acquire them in much the same manner and timeframe as verbal languages are acquired, ASL included.
Yes, the fact that ASL has been spoken as a first language for over 100 years certainly shows it to be a natural language in all respects save its origins (much like a pidgin - a blend of many languages used only to aid communication between multilingual communities - becomes a creole - a pidgin with native speakers). In contrast, whereas Klingon is a joke amongst people who fancy themselves superior to others.
But my point was not that Klingon was a real language and it was ok to teach it to him. It certainly is never ok to experiment on children, particularly because they cannot give their consent and because of the possible longterm effects. My point was that I don't think the child has been harmed by not being exposed to English from his father until age 3. And as forceful as your manner of disputing me may be, I still believe that. Neither you nor I will know until we hear of a follow up in a couple of years.
11/19/09
Ans as to your first point, there would indeed be a delay in acquisition of English, just as there was a delay for me when I moved here at age 5 with no previous exposure to English phonology. By age 6, no one could tell I wasn't born here.
As for your kids, they'll think you're a dumbass no matter what, so don't sweat it. At least your're not Klingon dad!
11/19/09
I do disagree with the last paragraph, there is plenty of evidence for the interference of homophony in second language acquisition: the english speaker thinking of "savon" when trying to recall the french word for "soup" for instance. Moreover, translation is an inexact science. It is a mistake to think that every concept in one language has an analogue in another. The classic examples of this are the colour spectrum. Some Ls have far fewer colour words than others. Notoriously, the Welsh blue/grey distinction is different to English.
11/19/09
He was and many of the people speaking out in support of what he was doing was as well.
What you're getting at was one of the whole reasons that he said he chose Klingon in the end. For example there wasn't a Klingon word for table so it became "the thing that is flat". Bottle was "vessel". An interesting aside there wasn't a Klingon word for "love" since Kingon's don't have the concept so he just used the English word which I found sweet in its own right. Either way it was still a challenge for him too.