Klingon Language Institute

Logo of the KLI

Frontpage of kli.org

The Klingon Language Institute (abbreviated KLI) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the study of the Klingon language, from a scholarly and linguistic point of view. It was founded in 1992 by its director Lawrence M. Schoen. Although they want to support all sorts of "Klingon language" (see Klingonese and Paramount Hol), the main focus lies on the tlhIngan Hol created by Marc Okrand in 1984.

Organs of the KLI

Director Lawrence M. Schoen
Assistant Director Mark Shoulson
Webmaster Chris Lipscombe
Learn Klingon Online Course Coordinator Robyn Stewart
qep'a' Coordinator Jeremy Cowan
qepHom coordinator Alan Anderson
Extended Corpus Project Coordinator Felix Malmenbeck
Religious Text Translation Project Coordinator MelanieRoney
Klingon Shakespeare Restoration Project Coordinator Christopher Kidder-Mostrom

Membership Card

first membership card

black membership card

red membership card

In the first years of the KLI's existence, all members received a membership card. It had no function, except for proud members to show they are a member.

First version

The first membership card was made of thick gray plastic that had been printed in black ink, only on one side. Alas, the printer did a poor job, and the ink could rub off. On the left, it had the phrase "Klingon Language Insitute", on the right side it had a trefoil with the letter a written in pIqaD

Second version

The laminated membership card was available in red and in black. The card itself is 89 x 51 mm (3½" x 2") large, but including the laminated border it measures 95 x 57 mm. It had the KLI logo on the left side, and its name (tlhIngan Hol yejHaD) in Klingon letters on the upper right corner.

Membership number

Explained by Lawrence M. Schoen, adapted for the wiki. (1)

The membership number is a compound of an upper case letter plus three digits on the A-cards or four on all others.

The initial character doesn't exactly correspond to the year. Originally, the A's were set aside for particular individuals and comped memberships. For example, A001 is the Library of Congress, A002 is Marc Okrand. Lawrence M. Schoen does not recall when he started including membership numbers in the database, but it's probably not from the very beginning because he hadn't met Okrand when he started the organization.

Things really get rolling with the C-cards. These do correspond to the year of membership starting from 1992, but more than that:

the first digit represents the quarter in which the member joined.
the rest of the number show the ordinal position in which they joined.

Thus Jeremy Cowan has C1008 as his membership number, indicating that the first quarter (i.e. January thru March), in year C (1992), he was the 8th person to join. Lieven L. Litaer's membership number is I4027; he was the 27th person to join the KLI in the 4th quarter of year I (1998).