The Pittsburgh based Duolingo company has begun offering a free Klingon course to anyone wanting to learn the popular language. It’s available on their website but will be later released on the Duolingo app for Android and iOS at a future date.
It’s been a highly anticipated release, leading to a waitlist of over 170,000 prior to the official launch. The course will teach you vocabulary, sentence structure, phrases and everything in between. After completion, you will be able to write and speak the "Star Trek" language.
Klingon language course developed by Swedish-based 'Trekkie'
CBS News reported that the course was developed by a small group of volunteers as well as a passionate “Trekkie” based in Stockholm, Sweden. Felix Malmenbeck said creating the language provided some challenges. Malmenbeck said that the Klingon language uses apostrophes in the middle of words, something no other language does. The Klingon language is case sensitive, meaning the word can take different meanings if it’s capitalized or lowercased. Luckily, Duolingo had a solution, thanks to the German language, which is similar, so they just had to make a small tweak to make Klingon work the same way.
Malmenbeck says that he took most of the source material from the new series and less from previous shows.
He says that previous series just made up stuff on the spot when dealing with the Klingon language. Malmenbeck also said he first got into the language after going through the Klingon dictionary.
Fans are fascinated by the language
Ever since the debut of “Star Trek,” fans have been fascinated with the Klingon language, but learning a complex language takes time and practice, especially when it’s your first time.
Malmenbeck says this course gives people a way to get regular practice with the language. He also believes that more and more "Star Trek" fans will get involved in this course.
Interest in the language has spiked since the premiere of the new “Star Trek: Discovery” show, creating a stronger connection between the show and language.
“Star Trek: Discovery” is a reboot of the original series. Duolingo provides learners 5-minute lessons each day so they can speak phrases in Klingon and better communicate with other Klingon fans.
Duolingo’s courses are not constructed to make a user fluent, so it’s unclear how long it would take someone to become fluent in Klingon. Duolingo spokesperson Michaela Kron has said there are nearly 30-50 fluent Klingon speakers across the globe. This is not the first created language that Duolingo has set out to teach. Duolingo offers courses in the "Game of Thrones" High Valyrian.
