Clever Klingons

Since they're a top tourist spot, you can take audio tours of Jenolan Caves in many different languages - like German, Japanese, and very soon in Klingon!

As the nerds among you will already know, Klingon is a constructed language - invented by US linguist Marc Okrand for the Star Trek films about 30 years ago. But since then, the Klingon language has developed a life of its own outside Star Trek.

No one can say for sure how many people in the world speak Klingon, but it's certainly the best-known and most developed movie language - well ahead of other fake languages from Lord of the Rings or Avatar, for example.

There are Klingon translations of Shakespeare's Hamlet and The Bible, a Klingon opera was recently performed in Scotland's capital city, Edinburgh, and you can even choose Klingon as your interface language for Google.

There is a serious side to all of this work. Linguists study Klingon because it helps them to understand how people learn languages in general and may help to preserve the world's endangered languages, many of which have fewer speakers than Klingon does.

I doubt that many visitors to Jenolan Caves will go for the audio tour in Klingon - it seems more like a clever publicity stunt. After all, everyone knows the Klingons get their wrinkled foreheads from the effort it takes to pronounce words in their language.

Like Spock, I'd prefer to live long and prosper.