Finished TKD in Anki!

[pne]

So I’m using Anki to practise Klingon vocabulary (among other decks): I entered my Klingon word database into it, tagged with (among others) the source of the words.

That let me practise the words necessary for level 1 of the proficiency test first; I had seen all of them at least once by the time I went to the qepHom in November.

Then I started on the remaining words from The Klingon Dictionary, and I saw the last of those for the first time this morning.

So now I’ve seen all TKD words at least once in Anki—both ways, even (en–tlh and tlh–en)! From now on, it’s just review, review, review so that they’ll stick in my memory.

I still have a bunch of words hiding, though, and now I’m considering when to add them to my workload and in what order. I think I’ll pause on adding new words right now to consolidate the TKD ones a bit, but then the question is whether to enable all of the remaining ones at once (20 new words per day, in random order) or whether to continue sorting by priority (which would put words from Klingon for the Galactic Traveler first, then other words).

…though looking at my data, I guess I made that decision months ago :) I’ve been learning words in the order added, and did the randomising when I added them. So I guess I’ll keep that order, which will give KGT words in random order followed by newer words in random order. So the only remaining question is how long to pause before I’ll let them in.

Still, an accomplishment!

Comments

[steorra]

I was in a conversation the other day where the question came up of whether there have been any children who have learned Klingon as a first language. I seem to recall hearing about one case where a parent tried to speak Klingon to their child but the child refused to use it from a fairly young age. Do you know anything about the topic in general, and whether there are any children who have actually learnt Klingon as a first language?

[pne]

D'Armond Speers and his son Alec - the ones you mention - are the only case I'm aware of. I don't know much more than what you wrote.

I don't know when Alec stopped speaking Klingon, either - old enough to speak, obviously, and there used to be a sound clip floating around of him singing something in Klingon (which I could never listen to since it was in a RealAudio format old enough that I never successfully obtained an appropriate codec).

Things would be slightly easier these days since there's more vocabulary compared to back then (I remember it being commented on that there wasn't even a word for "table" back then; there is now), but vocabulary is still rather limited.

Even more so for things that traditionally interest babies and toddlers such as dummies/pacifiers, nappies/diapers, construction machines, earth animals, and so on. So you'd have to be pretty creative.

There aren't all that many fluent speakers of Klingon to begin with - perhaps on the order of 50.

You'd also have to come up with all the nursery rhymes and books yourself.

I suppose it would be doable again if you were determined enough.

[steorra]

Thanks.