New Okrand Atlantean Grammar Notes from Okrand Himself, Maker of Klingon

A forum for all topics related to constructed languages
Post Reply
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

New Okrand Atlantean Grammar Notes from Okrand Himself, Maker of Klingon

Post by Bob »

New Okrand Atlantean Grammar Notes from Okrand Himself

https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2020/0 ... w=flipcard

By Mr. Mark Okrand, PhD Linguistics, Maker of the Klingon Language for Star Trek.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Okrand

And Mr. Larry Rogers, BA Linguistics (Michigan State University, 2009).

Edited by Mr. Larry Rogers.

Put online Sat 7 18 2020.

...

...


Image


Image: I can't just use the movie posters all the time, so I'm going to choose some fitting image for this entry. This is one of the most scenic views of Atlantis from the movie.



Mark Okrand is better know for making and adding to the Klingon Language from Star Trek. He's written about 4 books on Klingon, a grammar-dictionary and then several books and audio recordings of proverbs and word discussions. He was also at one time president of the National Closed Captioning Institute. He also made an Atlantean Language for the 2001 Disney film Atlantis: The Lost Empire.



I started work on Atlantean and first deciphered it around 2006. In 2007, I was made head admin of its largest online community, now the Atlantis the Lost Empire Atlantean Language by Dr. Marc Okrand facebook group. Starting in 2006, I started writing Okrand every couple years and asking others to write him for more information about the language. A few years ago, I finally got ahold of him on facebook.



Atlantis the Lost Empire Atlantean Language by Dr. Marc Okrand

https://www.facebook.com/groups/377768309042171/



The name of the group is not supposed to imply or be ambiguous that the group is by Marc Okrand. It is not. But the language is by Marc Okrand. Facebook group names must be very terse.



And then recently he gave me the first grammatical information about the language that he ever gave me. I asked him if I could share it online and he said okay.



I am only going to quote my prompts where absolutely essential. The rest you can figure out from my online corpus and dictionary. And then anything else that I say which is not really essential but implied by his responses, I will not include that.



Again, these are all quotes from my facebook private messenger between Marc Okrand and I.



...

...



( Before this, he's told me that he lost all his notes on Atlantean and hopes to find them some day. But it's not a big deal because I and the other decipherers figured most of the language out to a reasonable and agreeable degree. Still, 1/4 of the words in the corpus are undecipherable. )



Marc Okrand:

May 7 2020. Thanks for all of the information (and links) you sent. This is amazing. I had no idea there was that much out there.



May 19 2020. Sure. Feel free to pass along anything about Atlantean that I may tell you.



June 10 2020. As I think I mentioned earlier, they sent me a lot of text to translate, but, as I recall, I didn't know what the text was for -- for a wall? for the book? something else? So, unfortunately, I can't add anything here.

If you want to send me questions about the language, I'll do my best... but it's been 20 years, so I don't know how successful I'll be.



June 22 2020. qatlho'! pageshenen!

[ Thank-you! (?) (in Klingon) Thank-you! (in Atlantean) ]



June 22, 2020. Thanks also for all of the links. I looked at some of your stuff quickly -- impressive! I did see, though, some vocabulary that isn't mine (or at least I don't think it is), like the measurement words. I guess Disney added some things for some of their products.



June 22 2020. I don't think I've ever seen any book they came out with, but I remember that they did create words for at least one book. I don't know who did that. Also, when they made the sequel (which ended up being a direct-to-DVD thing), they created some new vocabulary on their own.



June 22 2020. I think you're right about deg (relative marker). yos would be a different kind of subordinate clause marker. And there are no infinitives that I recall.



Larry Rogers:

June 24 2020. Did you write this quote by Milo from the movie, "Now what’s really amazing is that if you deconstruct Latin, overlaid it with a little Sumerian, throw in a dash of Thessalonian, you’d be getting close to their grammatical structure. Or at least in the same ballpark. Which is almost exactly like certain obscure offshoots of Choctaw! Well, obviously using Creek pronunciation, but you get the point, proving once and for all, that Atlantean trade routes accessed the new world centuries before the Bronze Age! Take that, Mr. Harcourt!" He says it in the middle of the movie, right after they get to Atlantis. Does it reflect the actual grammatical realities of Atlantean?



Marc Okrand:

June 29 2020. No... I didn't write that line. (I didn't write any of the lines.) And if the way he describes the grammar of Atlantean matches up in any way with the grammar I devised, it's an interesting coincidence. But I like the fact that Milo's trying to figure all of this out!



June 29 2020: Yes. You can tell other people what I've said.



There are five vowels (a, e, i, o, u). I wanted to use a very common vocalic system.



July 1 2020: There were a bunch of cases, but I don't think there were any noun classes. I'm not sure what you mean by "types of verbs." As far as I remember, all adjectives were treated the same way. And I don't remember anything about the grammar of adverbs (sorry).



July 1 2020:

No noun classes, no verb classes. I don’t recall any irregular verbs, but I may be wrong about that. For the possibly indeclinable adjectives/adverbs, do you have examples (in context, that is, in a sentence or phrase)? Similarly for kwetip and “go” — do you have sample sentences?



...

...



Notes by Me:



Here's the list of links that I sent him, probably:



Grammar

https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2018/1 ... w=flipcard



Corpus

https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard



Dictionary

https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard

( All entries labeled "unknown" are undecipherable and the meanings given for them are entirely "assigned", made up by me based on the PIE words in the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (the 1970s onward appendix by Calvert Watkins in book form). )



You can find all the webpages by me on Atlantean listed here. Just search for Atlantean.



https://anylanguageatall411.blogspot.co ... w=flipcard



...



Here are all the relative and subordinate clause markers for Atlantean:



deg: relative clause marker

bet: subordinate clause marker, clause as object of verb

yos: subordinate clause marker
Last edited by Bob on 19 Jul 2020 06:24, edited 1 time in total.
Bob
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 105
Joined: 09 Jul 2020 07:32

Re: New Okrand Atlantean Grammar Notes from Okrand Himself, Maker of Klingon

Post by Bob »

I have thread already going on about Okrand Atlantean on this website and on Zompist Bboard. But this was such a big deal, I decided to make a separate thread for it.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7267
Post Reply