All Star Trek fans surely know what the Klingon language is, a language spoken by the alien race of the Klingons in the franchise’s television series and movies. Many fans and admirers of the saga know it and even speak it, but the most curious story about it is that of a man who tried to teach it to his newborn son.
The curious story of the father who tried to teach the Klingon language to his newborn son
We are talking about the computational linguist Dr. Armond Speers who, despite not being a Star Trek fanatic, is a huge fan of “constructed languages.” Speers, in fact , became fascinated by the Klingon language after reading a brochure on a bulletin board in Georgetown, where he was studying linguistics.
For this reason, the linguist joined the Klingon Language Institute (KLI) and soon became one of the most famous (and discussed) members when he decided to teach the language to his young son Alec (still a baby), to become his true mother tongue.
However, in order not to cause her son any potential learning difficulties, Speers’ wife always spoke English with the boy. That is why during the first three years of his life the baby learned to speak two languages at the same time with his father, speaking exclusively to him in kinglon and even singing the imperial anthem as a lullaby to make him fall asleep.
This experiment, spanning three years, earned Speers both praise for the feat and harsh criticism. Speers, however, argued that getting her son to learn multiple languages was beneficial to his learning. The Klingon language , however, is not very easy to speak and has many limitations . To ask to turn off the light, you actually have to say something like “make it dark.”
What was the end result of the experiment
But the end result of the experiment was not as Speers had hoped, as her son never fully learned Klingon and ended up speaking only English (much easier by comparison), despite knowing a few words. At the age of three, Alec actually stopped listening to his father speaking Klingon: ” It was clear that he didn’t like the language and didn’t want to make a problem of it, so I switched to English .” Speers declared in 2010 the year of the experiment and to this day, Alec does not remember anything of the language his father tried to teach him.
