Man Spoke Klingon to Son for First Three Years

When d'Armond Speers' son was born 15 years ago, the linguist and software consultant spoke only Klingon to him for his first three years of life. With that experience Speers was recently recruited by Ultralingua, a computer software company, to help develop a dictionary based on the fictional language.

"I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language," Speers told Minnesota Daily . "He was definitely starting to learn it."

Ultralingua, a dictionary, translation and grammar software company based in Dinkytown, Minn., wanted to create a dictionary based on Klingon, from the Star Trek series , for the iPhone and computers for dedicated fans of the language. Speers was a perfect fit.

Though one may think that Speers is a  "Trekkie," rather he said he is a fan of languages. "I don't go to Star Trek conventions, I don't wear the fake forehead," he said. "I'm a linguist."

And the Klingon experiment with his son? The boy is now in high school and doesn't speak a word of Klingon, reported Minnesota Daily .

The Klingon language has its own institute and literary works like William Shakespeare's Hamlet and parts of the Bible have been translated into the guttural language.