Best or Worst Dad Ever? Man taught his son Klingon before he taught him English

If you're still mad at your dad for forcing you to play sports or practice a musical instrument, get ready to forgive him! Aside from actual physical or mental abuse, obviously, this is the WORST thing I've ever heard a parent do to their kid.

With the birth of his son 15 years ago, dedicated linguist (to say the least) d'Armond Speers embarked on the ultimate experiment: He spoke to him only in Klingon—the language of the alien race of Star Trek fame—for the first three years of his life.

Speers told Minnesota Daily :

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

The guy needs to put his Trekker ways aside for a second... or I'm gonna take my phaser OFF of stun, ok that was geeky of me to say. Anyway, teaching your child another language is one thing, albeit one only spoken by the most devoted of Star Trek fans. But to severely inhibit your child's ability to learn and communicate with the world around him is pretty irresponsible. I'll admit, my Dad's laid back hippie sensibilities have rubbed off on me, but he wasn't giving me doobies instead of Huggies!

Speers, a self-employed software consultant, is now helping Ultralingua, a dictionary, translation and grammar software company, create applications for a Klingon dictionary. The Klingon dictionary has been developed as applications for the iPhone in May and for Mac and Windows computers over the summer. The software includes a conversational phrases component, featuring audio clips of Lt. Commander Worf, the Klingon from the Star Trek: The Next Generation, speaking phrases such as “All of you are boring” and “I’ll have the black ale.”

Speers maintains that he's not a Star Trek fanatic, but rather it's his love of language that attracted him to the Klingon language:

I don’t go to ‘Star Trek’ conventions, I don’t wear the fake forehead. I’m a linguist.

So not only is Speers alienating himself from people who don't like Star Trek, but he's distancing himself from people who do! I wouldn't be sirprised if he also said, "I'm not a stripper, I'm a dancer."

So what do you think? Best or worst dad ever?

Here's another parent teaching their baby Klingon... not that I'd be able to tell the difference between baby jibberish and the Klingon language.

Via: SciFiWire