Internet Culture

Duolingo adds Klingon to its language tutorials

You can’t learn Japanese or Mandarin, but you can learn to talk to aliens.

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Aja Romano

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Duolingo, a small but popular website that lets people learn languages at their own pace, is helping Star Trek fans everywhere by adding Klingon to its language database.

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Though it’s often used as the punchline to a geek-shaming joke, Klingon—the language of a venerable race of Star Trek aliens—is a real language created by a real linguist. It comes with its own complex linguistic rules and is even overseen by a language institute.

Not everyone is happy that the popular language-learning site is adding Klingon before other, more practical languages.

So far, all 10 of the languages available to English-speakers are European languages. Many other non-European languages are in what’s known as the “incubator” stage, only one—Vietnamese—is close to being added; it’s in the “hatching” stage, but its coursework is only 30 percent complete.

https://twitter.com/BadExampleMan/status/586208156109434882

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Ironically, it’s the “garbage nerd shit” that allows sites like Duolingo to function in the first place. The site’s languages go through a rigorous compilation, testing, and beta process, which usually requires a group of committed, experienced volunteers. But Duolingo’s Klingon course was built entirely by one volunteer, B.J. Felix Malmenbeck, who, despite the backlash, has gained a following of grateful Trekkies and language lovers.

In response to the outpouring of support, Malmenbeck commented

I’m hoping it will make the Klingon-speaking community larger and more diverse :) Also, I hope that even if not many people learn the language fluently because of this course, they will at least have a lot of fun with it and perhaps feel even more motivated to continue with other languages.

In other words: Live long and conjugate.

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Photo via davidhogue/Flickr(CC BY SA 2.0)

 
The Daily Dot