'entepray' HIvlu'! yIvem 'ej vay' yIta'!

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A while back, I was asked to come up with a line of Klingon for this Star Trek-themed alarm clock. The line was The Enterprise is under attack! Wake up and do something!

That line translates as

'entepray' HIvlu'! yIvem 'ej vay' yIta'!

You will come across the -lu' indefinite subject verb suffix shortly.

I am bringing up this topic now, because I stumbled across that same model of alarm clock recently in a charity store. The voice and the Klingon line were exactly how I remembered them.

Since that time, tlhIngan Hol has become ubiquitous, its influence spreading far beyond the TV series and movies to infect the ordinary world. Klingon appears in interfaces of websites such as Facebook; the language has appeared on road signs, in news articles, and even in song lyrics (Marc Okrand, creator of the Klingon language, gave Kate Bush the phrase peDtaH 'ej chIS qo' as the Klingon for the sentence It is snowing and the world is white).

The language began as a jokey book launched to coincide with Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, little more than another piece of merch with as little value as that alarm clock. It has turned into something else altogether - an expression of linguistic skill, a challenge to learn and a hobby which has expanded beyond the confines of Star Trek fandom to infuse itself into common experience in a manner that neither Marc Okrand, nor Gene Roddenberry, could have ever imagined.

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