The 'Fictional' Language Klingon Has Real Fluent Speakers

The guttural sounds spoken by Star Trek's most famous warriors are far more than just sci-fi gibberish. Initially, just a handful of phrases were invented by actor James Doohan (Scotty) for the first film. For *Star Trek III: The Search for Spock*, producers hired professional linguist Marc Okrand to develop it into a complete, usable language. Okrand designed the grammar and sounds to feel intentionally alien (Review) to English speakers, even using a rare Object-Verb-Subject sentence structure. For instance, instead of saying "I see the ship," a Klingon speaker would say the equivalent of "The ship, I see."

This linguistic authenticity gave birth to a dedicated real-world community. The Klingon Language Institute (KLI) was founded in 1992 to promote and support the language, publishing dictionaries and hosting annual conferences. This devotion has led to incredible projects, including translations of epic works like *Hamlet* and parts of the Bible into Klingon. The language's legitimacy was further cemented when the popular language-learning app Duolingo launched an official course, allowing anyone with a smartphone to learn how to properly say "Qapla'!" (Success!).