The urge to provide "the other" with medical care bears fruit as ap tells us: "The office that treats mental health patients in Multnomah County had included Klingon on a list of 55 languages that could be spoken by incoming patients. But the inclusion of the Star Trek language drew a spate of tongue-in-cheek headlines. And now the county has rescinded its call, stressing that it hasn’t spent a penny of public money on Klingon interpretation. “It was a mistake, and a result of an overzealous attempt to ensure that our safety net systems can respond to all customers and clients,” Multnomah County chair Diane Linn said in a news release. County officials had previously said that no patient had ever come in speaking only Klingon, but that the county would pay a Klingon interpreter in the unlikely case one was actually needed. In recent years, Klingon has gone from being a fictional tongue for the Star Trek television and movie series to a complete language, with its own grammar, syntax and vocabulary." If you want to train yourself to be able to apply for the job, you can have a look at the Klingon alphabet here, or go directly to The Klingon Language Institute: "Klingon was invented by Marc Okrand, for use in some of the Star Trek movies. He invented not just a few words to make the Klingons sound alien, but a complete language, with its own vocabulary, grammar, and usage." Mental Health, Klingons ... in the 19th century a psychiatrist was called an "alienist", but the term vanished. Are cultural anthropologists, dealing with "the other", today's alienists? I found the explanation of the term on the frontispiece of Caleb Carr's novel The Alienist. Really worthwhile to read IMHO; and Franz Boas himself, icon of american cultural anthropology, appears in the novel. UPDATE: Over at Anthro-L Dustin M. Wax wrote an encompassing commentary on the Klingon-language story. Out of this an interesting thread developed.

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