TlhIngan Hol: esercizi per una lingua globale

Abstract

Artificial or invented languages are those of a non-natural heritage, the result of the deliberate workings of an individual or a group thereof. To these terms we could add that of language which commonly refers to the languages of fictional people, living in unreal, nowhere places, evoking images of unknown lands, distant Eldoradoes. Classic instances of artificial languages are the Esperanto and the Volapuk, famous attempts for a universally neutral while, among the imaginary ones, intuitively more directly connected to literary experimentation, we can find the Jabberwocky, from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in wonderland and the Newspeak, from George Orwell’s 1984. Working on such languages has always been the source of many a criticism from those who consider such practice just an artful divertissement. Surely, from a utilitarian point of view, artificial languages could be considered valid, though a bit utopian, attempts to break the international monopoly of the English language, or, at best, as intriguing literary artifices. But the Klingon language, even though originating from a context, that of fiction, common to other imaginary languages, went through some unexpected developments which offered a starting point for a revaluation of its existence and the existence of its stepsisters.