Klingon? Yes, please! Interview With Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen (Part 1 of 4)

Last updated on March 8, 2022

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen, the founder and head of the Klingon Language Institute (KLI). We talked for more than an hour about Lawrence’s unique experiences because of his involvement in this organization. This is the first of a series of four articles resulting from that conversation that covers everything from the origin of the KLI to Shakespeare and chocolate and to why now is a great time to learn Klingon!

Adeena: Let’s start at the beginning. When and how did the Klingon Language Institute get started?

Lawrence: For the stupidest of reasons, actually. I was a college professor at the time at a small liberal arts college north of Chicago. Enrollments were down year after year, and I was the newest hire in the largest department. So, my number was up. They gave me a year, sort of as a lame duck professor, and I started sending out applications. And, you know, once you send your paperwork out, you have nothing to do but wait and work on an ulcer. I needed a distraction, and somebody gave me a copy of Dr. Marc Okrand’s Klingon dictionary. Looking through the dictionary, I thought, well, this could kill some time; this will distract me for six or nine or 12 months until I find an academic job somewhere else.

I put out such feelers as I could—it was the pre-web days—and I found there was a community of Klingon speakers. I approached them, and as an academic, I said, “We should have a professional society. I’ll create one and it will be modeled on other academic organizations.” Hence the Klingon Language Institute.

It was only supposed to last a short while as a distraction. Along with having a professional society, you have to have a peer-reviewed journal, one that is very clearly not a fanzine. This important distinction later contributed to us getting a free license from CBS.

And then everything exploded.

Adeena: Why did Klingon take off (as opposed to Vulcan or Romulan)?

Lawrence: Well, everybody has their opinion, I certainly have mine. I think there’s a pragmatic reason, and then there’s a more subjective reason. The pragmatic reason is that Marc Okrand, who was hired to come up with a language for the films, put out a book. He was first hired to work on Vulcan. Then in another film, they say, “Now we need Klingon, Marc.” And he tells this story very, very well about how he took all the lines that were supposed to be in Klingon, and he figured out how to say to them in Klingon. And then everywhere else in the script where there was a Klingon, he took their lines that were going to be in English, and he figured out how to say those in Klingon as well. And he had all these notes. He went to, I think, the director, after the film was done. He said, “I have all these notes. I’m not sure what to do with them.” And the director, who was a friend of his, said, “Come with me, we’re going to the merchandising meeting.” They pitched and received approval for him to do the book: The Klingon Dictionary. So very pragmatically, the reason Klingon took off was because there was a manual.

The Klingon Dictionary  isn’t merely a dictionary. It’s a short description of the grammar and the glossary. That’s what you need to really start learning a language, and there wasn’t such a thing for Vulcan. There was very little vocabulary developed and almost nothing on the grammar. There’s still not much of anything for Romulan and certainly there wasn’t 30 years ago.

Adeena: And the subjective reason?

Lawrence: More subjectively: I think because as Klingons were portrayed, they had license. There’s no apologizing in Klingon, there’s no social lubrication in Klingon conversation. You don’t say, “Hello,” you don’t say, “Thank you.” There’s a wonderful radio interview that Marc did where near the end of the interview the announcer asked him, “So how do Klingon’s say goodbye?” And Marc says, “Oh, they don’t. They just get up and leave.” And then you hear the door open and close. And the announcer says, “That was Dr. Marc Okrand, creator of The Klingon Dictionary.” So, in a world that is so full of political correctness, and minding your P’s and Q’s, Klingons can’t be bothered with any of that. There’s a certain freedom, I think that appealed, both to fans of the show, and more folks in general.

Adeena: I’ve always felt that we got the most insight into Klingon culture, at least initially, during ST:TNG and through Worf.

Lawrence: A couple of things there. On the one hand, there’s always the danger, particularly in fannish circles, where you have an episode that puts forth certain things, and they become universals. Often, a few episodes later in the season, there’ll be something else that contradicts that universal. Now there’s a new universal, rather than say, Okay, in this time in place, there’s a group of people represented by this one character, right? And that’s how they do it. That’s problematic, because as a writer—as a writer, myself—it’s always dangerous to have a token character who has to stand in for that race, that religion, that orientation, what have you, as if to say they: They are the template! If a Klingon character says, “I like ham sandwiches!” Then, oh! Klingons love ham sandwiches! Well, no. That kind of overgeneralizing is dangerous. It gets even more problematic when you consider Worf is the Klingon who was not raised among Klingons. It’s like learning a foreign language from a textbook. Worf was a textbook Klingon, and that’s unfortunate. It carries with it certain limitations and should carry with it some warnings.

Adeena: I guess that’s the nature of any TV show that we’re limited to what we can see. You know, we can’t see 1000 Klingons.

Lawrence: Absolutely. Well, you can, but the cost, oh my god. And like the image behind me, we could build the Great Hall on the Homeworld or we could, you know, just paint a backdrop. Yeah. And I’ve got no problem with the realities of that. The issue is with people who take a minor piece and run with it as if it’s a universal and lose sight of that. Star Trek, constantly, over all these years, has contradicted itself left and right. And that’s okay. It gives fans something to argue about: what’s canon, what’s not canonical, and so forth. Which, ironically, I suspect, is something that Klingons probably wouldn’t care that much about.

Next time, we’ll get into more about the Klingon language itself. Until then, remember:  qaStaHvlS wa’ ram loS SaD Hugh SljlaH qetbogh loD! (See comment for translation.)

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Continue to Part 2….