This is an interesting story to me. There’s liking Star Trek, and then there’s liking Star Trek a little too much. Like, way too much. Like, to the point where it’s detrimental to your child’s development and opinion of you. Case in point, a man in Minnesota only spoke to his son in Klingon for the first three years of his life.
Star Trek only recently became actually cool, with the new release of the prequel. Before it was always borderline entertaining at best, and I say that as a Trekkie. So the motivation for d’Armond Speers teaching his son Klingon is unclear. Unless you want him to yell QAPLA! and challenge every other toddler to deathmatches in their tiny cribs. Imagine tiny babies hitting each other with BAT’LETHS, AS FIRST FORGED BY KAHLESS THE UNFORGETTABLE WHEN HE DROPPED HIS HAIR INTO A VOLCA … okay, I’ll stop.
d’Armond Speers isn’t a bad dad. Some dads only speak to their child in a mix of condescension and profanity. Says Speers:
“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language. He was definitely starting to learn it.”
Yes. Your baby is smart enough to learn a language, but not enough to say, “DAD, YOU’RE AN IDIOT,” in his own.
Age three and he was only “starting to learn it”? Dear lord I hope the mom at least had the proper sense to teach her kid how to communicate. There was a mom, right?
If this man really had to teach a contructed language to his son. At least Esperanto can be used for international communication
I have an advantage over Mark Lorenz: I know Dr. Speers, his wife, and his son. They all speak English. The son was never spoken to “only” in Klingon when a toddler. A misplaced modifier can raise pseudo-ethical questions when one doesn’t know the facts, nor English grammar well enough, nor possess the intellectual curiousity to ask for an interview or fact check before offering up condemnations. This kind of sloppy posting that has its information all screwed up is what’s wrong with blogging versus actual reporting.
Yes, a two-hundred word article is really worth getting huffy about.
You win at life.
Klingon is difficult, but Esperanto is worldwide. And easy, of course
As in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2LPVcsL2k0
“Star Trek only recently became actually cool, with the new release of the prequel. Before it was always borderline entertaining at best…”
Yeah just borderline entertainment that’s been around for over 40 years, spawned five TV series, a Saturday morning cartoon series, eleven major motion pictures (so far) countless books, comic books, magazines, video games and board games. Gee, just think what full blown real entertainment would do.