In the Land of Invented Languages - Arika Okrent [97]
Unless, like me, you never met a mnemonic you didn't like. In order to memorize five hundred words in three days, I spun my mind into a frenzy of associative madness: waq—“shoe,” shoes are for walking; Qob—“danger,” cobras are dangerous; wIgh—“genius,” Einstein's hair looked like a wig; rur—“resemble,” the first letter resembles the last letter; ngeD—“easy,” ironic because “ng” and “D” are some of the harder sounds to pronounce. But careful not to get it mixed up with Qatlh—“difficult” (not ironic) because “Q” and “tlh” are the most difficult to pronounce.
Flip, flip, flip. The flash cards flashed. In my room at night, while everyone else hung out at the pool, I sorted them into piles of ten, only moving on to the next pile when I had one fully memorized. In the lobby, after the sing-along and before Klingon Pictionary, I had people quiz me. At the Old Spaghetti Factory, while we waited for a table for eighteen, I badgered Louise, who, frankly, didn't seem to be studying hard enough, into reciting my intra-Klingon word associations with me (“wIv, tIv, yIv”—“choose, enjoy, chew”—I choose to enjoy to chew).
By the afternoon of the test, I was feeling burned-out. My head was swimming with what were essentially useless nonsense words. And some of the Klingons were getting on my nerves. Did they have to be so weird? Did they have to be so weird in public’? At a small Thai restaurant that we practically took over during the lunch rush, I shrank in my seat as an exceptionally polite waitress patiently guessed at what my costumed tablemates were pointing to when they insisted on giving their orders in Klingon. I wanted to meet her gaze and apologize with my eyes, but she was too rattled by the experience to look my way. Later, as the group made its rubber-foreheaded, vinyl-gloved, wool-caped, guttural-Klingon-speaking way toward the door (with me ineffectively hiding behind my hair), I saw a table of cute teenage girls mouthing a silent chorus of “Oh … my … God!” I have to say, it stung.
Marc Okrand didn't make it to the qep'd that year. Scott wouldn't get his dictionary signed. But the greater disappointment was that no new words would be handed down. At previous qep'a's Okrand had come through with new vocabulary. Some words he created in response to lists of requests. (“You can't ask for anything impolite,” my guide, Mark Shoulson, told me, “but one year we did get the word for ‘snot.’”) Others were created on the spot—one year during the Klingon “Hokey Pokey,” when it came to Okrand's turn, he said, “You put your Sa'Hut in …” Everyone stopped for a mental dictionary scan, thinking, “Do I know this word?” Finally they looked to Okrand, and he turned and stuck his backside in. And that's how Klingon got the word for “tush” (Sa'Hut, incidentally, is tuchis backward).
Klingonists are strict about language authority. They have been especially strict since the early 1990s, when arguments about the KLI's translation projects for Hamlet (since completed) and the Bible (still ongoing) led to the formation of a splinter group called the ILS (Interstellar Language School, no longer active). No one but Okrand can introduce new vocabulary. And no dispute about grammar or usage is considered settled until Okrand has spoken. He handles this responsibility cleverly, especially in light of the fact that he himself is not a very good speaker of his own language. The conceit he uses is that he has sole access to a native Klingon speaker, a prisoner named Maltz (and let's just be clear