Star Trek: 10 Ways The Klingons Have Developed Since The 1960s
1. Klingonese, PetaQ! Do You Speak It?
First mentioned in the Original Series episode, The Trouble with Tribbles, the Klingon language wasn't spoken on screen until Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It was originally conceived by dialectician Hartmut Scharfe, James Doohan, and producer Jon Povill.
According to both Return to Tomorrow - The Filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek Monthly issue 80, Doohan became involved with creating Klingon when he learned that Gene Roddenberry didn't like what Scharfe had created. According to Povill, Scharfe created exactly what they needed when he developed the Vulcan language but his Klingon didn't sound alien enough. Doohan and Povill combined Scharfe's concept with their own nonsense syllables. Doohan taught the resulting gibberish to Mark Lenard and the other Klingon actors.
According to the books From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages edited by Michael Adams and In the Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent, when Leonard Nimoy directed Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, linguist Marc Okrand fleshed-out the language with a grammar and expanded vocabulary.
Orkand's work led to the Klingon Dictionary and other references. Fans have used these reference to create Klingon translations of literary works including Gilgamesh, Hamlet, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.