Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country (4/8) Movie CLIP - Speaking Klingon (1991) HD
Why Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange recommends it
Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange answerers and commenters point people to it as the canonical on-screen evidence for questions about how well Uhura, Spock and other Starfleet officers speak Klingon.
Recommended by 0 people across 0 different months, 2016 to 2018.
What it is
A 2-minute clip from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) in which Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols, tries to speak Klingon to an outpost monitor. It is a licensed movie clip posted by the Movieclips channel.
What people said
Cites user12183 · 2016-02 · Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange · on “Do Klingons refer to their battleships as "she"?”
When speaking in (or having the words translated to) English, the answer is apparently "yes". However, the Klingon language has no grammatical differences for the sex/gender of an object or individual. The third person pronoun can be translated as either «he» or «she». « ghaH vIlegh jIH » can be translated as either «I see him», or «I see her». Thus, the modern Klingon word for a space vessel « Duj » has no sex/gender. It is an it - not he, not she. It. This is further reflected in how plurals are formed for different noun classes / categories of things. The categories of things (similar to "women, fire, and dangerous things" being in a category together in Dyirbal [LINK] , or how ships are
Cites loghaD · 2016-05 · Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange · on “Can Spock speak Klingon?”
As Broklynite mentions in the comments, the reason a picture of Spock was used is likely because he is the most recognizable symbol of Star Trek, and that picture in particular. As for whether or not Spock speaks Klingon: At some point after the events of Star Trek V: The Really Really Bad One , Spock left the Enterprise to become a diplomat, and one of his most important contributions was serving as a special envoy to the Klingon Empire, which would eventually result in the Khitomer Accords. It would not be too surprising if Spock learned some Klingon during this time, but there is reason to believe that he was far from fluent: In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country , there is a scene [V
Cites O. R. Mapper · 2018-08 · Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange · on “How many languages does the average Starfleet officer speak?”
"It seems that Uhura does speak some Klingon, but she is obviously not comfortably fluent and makes some mistakes (but apparently not enough to be outed)." - I rather think the scene [this video] was intended to show Uhura does *not* know *any* Klingon and has to assemble the sentences word by word from printed dictionaries.