Learning Klingon Helps Man Beat Dyslexia

A 50-Year-Old British man has leaned a great tool in trying to beat dyslexia, learn Klingon.

Originally created by "Star Trek" star James Doohan and further developed by Marc Okrand for use in the various Star Trek television series, the "fake" language of Klingon has taken on a life of its own with complete dictionaries and famous plays like "Hamlet" being printed and performed in Klingon.

Jonathan Brown of Furzton first became interested in the language after being a fan of the TV shows and finding out that a complete language including grammer, vocab, and usage had been created,

"I had to buy it just to see what was going on. Then reading it and learning it, it was just so much fun."

"There are no niceties in Klingon, I think that's why a lot of people like it, it's very straightforward."

After 12 years of studying the language, Brown was appointed as the lead linguist in the creation of a CD for others who wanted to learn Klingon.  When reading the scripts to translate into Klingon, the dyslexic Brown found it a lot easier to comprehend what he was reading,

"Dyslexia is not something you get over, you live with it. It's not necessarily a hindrance, you just learn different ways to pick things up.

"Working on the translation has helped me understand where I've been having problems all my life with languages, I realised I'd been trying to remember the words in the name part of my brain and because I can't remember names, I can't remember the words.

"With the Klingon language games used on the CD, I tended to put words into a different place and it went into my long term memory."

Via BBC