A linguist from Minnesota says he spoke to his child in Klingon for three years as an experiment in language acquisition.

Dr d'Armond Speers of Georgetown University claims that for the first three years of his son's life, he tried to converse with him only in the fictional language made famous by the sci-fi TV series Star Trek.

Speers wanted to see whether Alec, now 13, would pick up Klingon as a first language.

"He was definitely starting to learn it," Speers said, adding that "his pronunciation was excellent."

However, he ran into difficulties when he stumbled over translating basic baby-related words such as "bottle" and "diaper," which lacked equivalents in Klingon. The experiment ultimately failed, as Alec eventually stopped listening to his dad's attempts at Klingon conversation. "It was clear he didn't enjoy it," said Speers.

Others in Alec's life, including his mother, spoke to him in English during the same period.

However, the linguist's endeavours were not in vain. He is now telling his story to promote the Star Trek Language Suite, a Klingon translator he developed with software company Ultralingua.

The Klingon application works on the iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac and Windows, and includes a phrase book and dictionary.

A decade later, Alec does not remember any Klingon words, though his father confesses to getting nostalgic when he reminisces about singing his son the Klingon lullaby 'May the Empire Endure.'

Speers says that, despite his unorthodox research, he's no 'Trekkie.'

"I don't go to Star Trek conventions, I don't wear the fake forehead," he told the Minnesota Daily. “I'm a linguist.”

21 November 2009

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