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11/20/09
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Don't phaser me bro!
11/20/09
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11/19/09
11/19/09
At least you put up the update, so there's that, but the damage was already done.
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
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
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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
"Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra."
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